


the man with guns for eyes

by 8sword



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), Grayson (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Outward Bound, batfamily, robins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 12:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7172372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8sword/pseuds/8sword
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Don’t blame him, little D. He gave me a choice.”</p><p>"He always makes it a choice," Damian mutters. "If you’re the one who makes the decision, it’s your fault if it’s the wrong one.”</p><p>(Dick comes back from the dead.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the man with guns for eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a birthday gift for my little sister. It uses what we like (Dick in Spyral) and ignores what we don’t (Damian dying. :( ). Please note that numerous plot holes and geographic inaccuracies were ignored in the making of this fic. Let us simply pretend that Wayne Enterprises jets can travel much faster than commercial ones.

 

 

We fall because someone _pushes_ us. We get up to _push back_.

\-- Dick Grayson

 

 

They're in the cave when the sensors start to shrill. Robin stiffens immediately to attention, looking up to scan the shadows between the cave's stalactites from behind the white lenses of his mask.

Batman shuts something on the Batcomputer. "Upstairs, Robin."

Robin wheels around at the order. "What?! If there's intruders--"

" _Upstairs_!" Batman snarls.

Robin flinches toward the stairs automatically, yanked like a puppet by the command in his father's tone; then just as quickly stops himself, forcing his legs to slow so that he can stomp up the stairs angrily, let his displeasure be known. Above the echoing raps of his steel-toed boots against the stone, he can hear Batman's low voice saying something; he makes out Alfred's name and "call Leslie."

He keys the control for the door that leads into the manor proper. He waits for it to hiss open, then steps backward, out of the light that will silhouette his outline, as it slides shut again. Slipping his boots from his feet, he sets them silently aside. Then he drops from the fifteen feet from the top of the stairs to the cave floor, landing soundlessly in a crouch in the shadows.

His father is pressing more keys on the Batcomputer's console, opening a frequency. The last of a growl erupts from the speakers: "--on't let me in, I'll ram my way in, Batman!"

"Hold on!" Batman growls back, and at the same moment, Damian hears the door to the manor above him open, and Pennyworth's quick steps flying down the steps. "I'm opening the door."

Damian presses back into the darkness as Alfred hurries down the foot of the stairs, already pulling nitrile gloves over his hands. "Is it Master Damian--" he begins, and cuts off as a huge, dark shape swoops into the cave. It alights right in front of them, right in the faint blue light from the computer screen, and in its hold, maskless and splattered with blood, is Grayson.

 

 

All that anyone in the cave sees after that is a green and yellow blur exploding from the shadows under the stairs. Batman barks, "Robin!" and Robin streaks past him, throwing himself onto Midnighter's back. There's a glint of light and Midnighter roars, bucking backward; red and white appears along his throat under the black of his suit. He bucks likes a wounded bull in a matador's ring, trying to throw Robin off. Robin merely knots his arms around his neck, yanking backward. Midnighter makes a choked, furious sound. Then there's a snap and crackle of electricity, outlining Damian's skeleton, and Dick's, too. He tries to hold on, but slumps backward, to the ground, only to pant for a second before rolling back up onto all fours. A birdarang appears in his hand.

"Tranq him!" Midnighter shouts. "Somebody tranq the damn kid!"

Robin snarls. Then the lenses of his mask go wide and white.

He crumples to the floor, revealing Dr. Thompkins behind him, holding a syringe.

 

 

Damian wakes up in his bedroom. He's been neatly tucked in beneath his dark blue comforter.

Pennyworth is sitting in a chair beside his bed. He clears his throat when their eyes meet. "Some water, sir?"

Damian slaps the glass out of Pennyworth's hand. It flies into the wall, shattering. "Where is he?"

"In the cave," Pennyworth says. "Resting. As you should be."

Damian flings the covers off. "I'm going to him."

"Master Bruce would prefer you did not."

"I don't give a damn what he prefers!"

Pennyworth says nothing. He makes no move to stop Damian, either, and the boy sneers at him as he passes, as he goes to the doorway. There, he pauses, hand on the door jamb, and looks back at the butler. "Does Drake know?"

Pennyworth says nothing for a long moment. Then, "He does not."

Damian's sneer twists further. "Summon him here," he says, and disappears from the room.

 

 

In the cave, his father is sitting next to Grayson's body. There are two IVs set up, one on either side of the hospital bed in which Grayson lies, the large bores disappearing into his veins. One leads into his father's own elbow, the tendons of which rise and disappear as he opens and closes his fist around one of Titus' chew toys, open and shut, open and shut. Dark red blood fills the clear plastic tubing.

He watches Damian approach with dark, quiet eyes. "Damian--"

"Don't speak to me."

His father falls silent. His eyes sliding back to Grayson, to the tubes in his veins and the blood pressure cuff around his arm and the thick, thick dressing around his thigh that speaks of a femoral artery wound.

Damian does not stare at any of those things. He looks at the monitor where Grayson's heart is in sinus rhythm and his oxygen saturation is 97% and blood pressure and mean arterial pressure are still lower than they should be. He looks at the bags of IV solution labeled 0.9% Normal Saline and the vials of epinephrine on the metal tray beneath them. He looks at the shadows cast on the floor by the display cases in the corner, where Grayson's Nightwing costume is suspended beside Todd's Robin one.

"Damian," his father says into the silence. "When he wakes up--"

"You mean _if_."

"When," Father says. "Don't blame him. This was my idea."

He doesn't have to clarify what _it_ is. There's no way Grayson could have been alive without his father knowing it. The late-night disappearances make sense now, the times Batman would send him away on his own while he spoke to someone.

"Of course it was your idea," Damian says. So furious he could split open at the seams with it, could explode into something huge and mindless like the monsters in the ridiculous movies Grayson made them watch together, separated only by a bowl of popcorn on the couch. "Todd is right, you are a megalomaniac. I wish you had stayed dead!"

Silence seeps back into the air between them. Broken only by the beeps of the monitors hooked to Grayson's body. Damian sneers, one more time for good measure, and retreats up into the stalagmites to watch, and to try to ignore the sudden twisting, sick hole in his abdomen.

 

 

Red Robin and Red Hood have just landed on a rooftop on Southwest 3rd when Red Robin holds up a hand.

Hood skids to a stop beside him in the gravel. "Aw, is it past Babybird's bedtime?"

Red Robin rolls his eyes at Hood behind the mask, finger coming up to activate his comm. "Yes?"

 "Sir, I'm afraid I must ask you to return to the cave. There's been a…development."

 _Alfred_ , Red Robin mouths to Hood. "A development?"

"Nothing I can share over this channel at this time."

Tim's curiosity is piqued. He looks over at Hood, whose face is invisible behind his helmet but who cocks his head to the side in the equivalent of a raised brow.

"All right," Red Robin says. "ETA thirty minutes, will that suffice?"

"To be honest, sir, I am not sure," Alfred says dryly. "However, I will attempt to keep our youngest master from killing our oldest one, no matter how much I may wish to join him."

There's an iron in Alfred's voice that Tim isn't used to hearing. It makes his pulse speed a little as he readies a grapple. "Acknowledged." He deactivates the comm.

"That was…weird," Hood says.

"Yeah," Red Robin says shortly. "You coming?"

"What, to the cave?"

"No, to the prom," Red Robin says, and Hood cuffs him upside the head.

"No," he says, unreadable. "I'll keep an eye on things out here."

"All right," Tim says instead of asking him to come. He almost can't believe that he wants to. That they've gotten so lonely, so desperate, with Dick gone, that he's latched on to Jason as a big brother. Wants him to be a buffer between whatever's going on between Bruce and the others now, the way Dick used to be for all of them.

Bruce has gotten more distant since Dick's death, but he hasn't turned violent and unpredictable the way he did after Jason's. If anything, he's just gotten cagier, goes longer without speaking to any of them, disappearing for long periods at a time and staring into space for long periods when he is around, brooding. It makes him seem old, the way Batman never seemed before.

Tim and Damian spent long, long hours in silence in the cave, tiptoeing around Bruce's silences, avoiding each other's eyes and those of their own reflections in the glass cases where Jason's costume stands, where Dick's does. Tim came back to Gotham from San Francisco to help them all through the hard time, the adjustment, even though they all know it's not an adjustment, because Dick being gone isn't something isn't something they _can_ adjust to. Like the sun being gone: everything dark and cold and nothing left to nurture anything that was left behind; it's just a slow wait for the inevitable, the death that is crawling toward them. Sometimes Tim feels so trapped by it he thinks he's been poisoned; a tightness in his chest that feels like dying, like he can't breathe. What is there to live for?

"Getting maudlin, Babybird," Hood says quietly.

Red Robin nods. He draws in a long, low breath. Waits for the terrified flitter-flutter of his heart to stumble into something slower, pulled taut by the discipline of his breaths. "I'll keep you posted."

"Whatever," Hood says, with a shrug like he doesn't care. Tim inhales again, slow and slightly less shaky, and jumps off the roof.

 

 

The lights lining the speedway inside the cave flicker to life as he zooms down them on his bike, the tight passageway of the cave finally opening up into the larger, fluorescent-lit expanse of the parking area where they leave the bikes and Batmobile. Alfred is waiting there, pale and still dressed in his pajamas. That's the first sign something is definitely wrong.

Tim skids to a stop and pulls off his helmet as he swings off of his bike. "What is it?"

In the fluorescent light, Alfred looks wan, and very tired. "Master Jason didn't come with you." It's not quite a question.

"Should he have?"

Alfred says nothing, just looks more tired. He turns, and Tim follows him down the lit path into the main space of the cave, where the Batcomputer looms up in one corner, and then into the smaller, better-lit area that serves as the medical area.

Tim's helmet clatters from his hands.

From his corner, Damian shoots him a disgusted look. Tim doesn't register it, his eyes glued to Dick's face. There's a tanness to it beneath the oxygen mask and the clammy pallor of cardiogenic shock. It speaks of having been alive, and out in the sun, for some time. There is no muscle atrophy in his arms, visible above the sheet drawn up over his chest, or his legs, outlined beneath the same sheet, and no streak of white in his hair to suggest the use of a Lazarus pit.

His eyes slide to Damian, anyways, looking for any sign of complicity, of satisfaction--that Damian had somehow gotten Dick to a Lazarus pit the way he'd shouted at Bruce that they should have afterward, after the body was no longer in reach. But Damian's body language, his knees drawn up to his chest and arms wrapped around them, reads only of misery and fury.

Tim's gaze slips to Bruce. And there. There, in the carved lines at the corners of his eyes and mouths, and the slow, steady clench and unclench of his fists as blood drains from his vein. Guilt and relief, but no shock.

No surprise.

He's pale around his lips. He's beginning to break out in a sweat, too, his forehead gleaming in the white fluorescent light. Tim has a vicious thought of letting Bruce pass out before moving forward to detach the bag and tourniquet. But Alfred steps forward and withdraws the needle carefully from Bruce's vein.

"That's enough, Master Bruce," he says quietly, and sets down beside Bruce's unused hand a large bottle of Gatorade. Then he wraps Kerlix around the gauze pressed over the small red hole in Bruce's elbow. Tim watches as it is wrapped, around and around.

"Did you know?"

No one answers the question. It hangs in the silence of the cave, over the quiet beeps of the machine. Tim's heart pounding. Stuttering. Roaring.

" _Did you know_?"

Dick's heart monitor spikes with a shrill alarm. Dick doesn't move, though. Bruce does, stirring like an ancient kraken finally roused from the depths.

"I did."

Tim stares at him in a cold, sick wash of disbelief. His lips are numb.

"Get out."

Bruce stands slowly. Like an old man, and he sways slightly for a second, hand coming out to grip Dick's bed to brace himself. Alfred moves forward, cupping Bruce's elbow, and Bruce stiffens, then allows himself to be helped out of the room.

Tim stares at the heart monitor as the sound of Bruce's shuffling footsteps fade out of earshot. Then a chuckle comes from his left.

His eyes snap there. A man moves forward out of the shadows. He's dressed all in black leather, including a mask over his stubbled face, and Damian eyes him with dislike but makes no move to attack him. "Never seen someone boss the Bat around like that."

"Who are you," Tim says coldly.

"The guy who saved your brother's life."

"Midnighter," Damian says from behind him. Tim gives a head jerk of acknowledgement. He's read the files on Stormwatch and its members.

"Thank you for that," he says. "As you may be able to tell, this is a family affair, so it would be best if you leave."

Midnighter gives a low laugh. "Tell him to give me a call when he wakes up." His eyes sweep back and forth between them behind his mask. "I bet he'll be dying for a break from all the family angst."

He strides out of the cave. In a moment, there's the sound of a motorcycle engine starting, and then the more distant sound of the cave doors grinding open and back shut.

Tim sits down like a puppet with his strings cut. Into Bruce's chair, which is still warm from his bulk. It makes Tim stand back up again, running his hands through his hair.

"Do we know what he's been doing?"

It's not a question for anyone in particular, but Damian sneers. "Father's had him acting as a double agent to infiltrate Spyral."

Tim has heard whispers of the organization but never more than that. He's almost too overwhelmed even to care, a tremble of adrenaline still coursing through him that he shouted at _Bruce_. He gestures at Dick: the oxygen mask, the IVs, the bandages. "Did Dr. Thompson do all this?"

"Yes," comes a voice from behind him. Tim turns to see Alfred has returned, a robe pulled over his pajamas now. "She's sleeping upstairs in case his condition…"

 _Worsens_ , Tim thinks. He feels behind him with one hand, finding Bruce's chair again and sitting down in it with his knees drawn to his chest, mirroring Damian. He watches Dick and, from the corner of his eye, Alfred. Guts knotted too tightly to ask.

Alfred seems to sense the question written in the tense curve of his spine. "I did not know, Master Timothy." There's raw grief in his voice, and Tim remembers coming down to the kitchen one morning after the funeral. Stopping in the doorway, because Alfred was at the island counter, a box of Dick's uneaten cereal in front of him, his head hidden in his hands. Creeping back upstairs, unwilling to intrude of Alfred's grief.

"Would you have told us," Damian says bitterly, "if you did?"

Alfred says nothing. Damian mutters, "Tt," and they fall into silence there in the cave, watching the slow rise and fall of Dick's chest.

 

 

It's the smell that wakes him. The familiar cold sharp damp of the cave mixed with something that shouldn't be there. Cigarette smoke. He forces open his eyes, and there's Jason, sitting with his helmet in his lap, a cigarette between his lips.

Their eyes meet.

Jason's mouth quirks up in the hint of a smile, around the cigarette with its glowing tip. "Oh, the baby birds are gonna be pissed." He takes the cigarette out of his mouth, blows out a thin wisp of gray smoke that curls up into the shadows of the cave. "I just sent them upstairs to get some z's and here you are waking up."

Dick makes a sound like a question. He shifts, only to feel white-hot pain lance down his right leg. He gasps.

Jason stands up, grinding the cigarette under his heel and leaning over him. Dick realizes for the first time that he's in a bed, and there are machines next to him, the familiar tug of needles in both his elbows. Jason does something to one of the machines, a series of beeps, and almost immediately Dick begins to feel a fogginess creeping through him.

He blinks against it, trying to sit up. The last thing he remembers is…a lot of sand? And heat? And…Minos.

His heart skips.

"Careful there, _Birdwatcher_ ," Jason says. Dick blinks up at him some more. Jason using that name doesn't make sense; no one's supposed to know that name except Bruce, but…

But he's in the cave.

"How does it feel?" Jason's voice is dark and mocking. "Coming back from the dead."

"Jay…" Dick feels a need to apologize that he can't quite find the origin of, like turning a box over in his hands and being unable to find the opening. But the morphine in the IV is tugging at him, pulling him down, and the last thing he sees before unconsciousness closes over him again are Jason's hands, clenched tightly inside his leather gloves.

 

 

The next time he wakes up, Jason is nowhere to be seen, vanished like a dream. Perhaps that's all he was, because Dick can focus enough, this time, to feel the guilt of having faked his death when Jason went through the real thing.

Dr. Thompkins is there, though, her hair as white as her coat, lips pursed tightly as she stares at the monitor above his head. He must make a sound, because she looks down, and her face absolutely crumbles in relief. "Richard."

"Doc." He coughs around the dry, scratchy feeling in his throat, and she makes a fussing sound not unlike Alfred and reaches across him to hand him a cup full of ice chips. He sucks on one gratefully, flashing her a smile. She gives him one back, resting her hand against his forehead, not so much to check his temperature as in a gesture of relief and affection.

Then she pulls back, lips pursing again. "Don't you smile at me like that, Richard Grayson. Do you know how angry I am at you right now?"

Dick swallows the rest of his ice chip, eyes flicking around the cave. He's in the medical bay, and the only person present besides himself appears to be Leslie. "For…?" he begins delicately. Wondering how Bruce has decided to spin this; if the secret is still exactly that, or if the beans are out: He's alive.

"You know what for," Leslie says severely. She takes out her stethoscope and listens to his heart, his lungs, lips pursed all the way. When she's done, she pulls the earpieces out and straightens up, eyeing him. "Bruce, I would have expected this kind of thing from. You…" Her nostrils flare, making her look angrier, and then all the anger seems to drain away, and she just shakes her head, looking tired. "You I expected better from."

Dick opens his mouth to defend himself.  Then the medbay door opens up, letting in a familiar voice. "--last time, Drake--"

The voice cuts off. Damian and Tim stand in the doorway, frozen.

"Um," Dick says. Guilt swirling in his stomach. "Hi?"

 

_Nine days later:_

"Hey, so…" Dick leans against the doorway of Damian's bedroom. The boy, seated at his desk with a sketchbook, ignores him.

Dick stands there a minute longer, rubbing his socked foot up and down the inside of his shin. He chews on the inside of his cheek. After a minute, Damian reaches into his desk drawer without looking at Dick and pulls an expensive set of Bose earphones over his head.

Dick sighs. Then he pushes away from the doorjamb and heads back down the hallway, down the staircase. Tim isn't around; hasn't been around in days, although Dick doesn't doubt he's keeping tabs on them, through hidden bugs and cameras, because Tim is like Bruce that way. He doesn't blame him, or Damian, for being mad at him, but still, it's not the homecoming he envisioned.

He finds himself missing Helena, and Spyral. Has to stop himself. Knows he shouldn't be missing them. But there was something easier about not having to worry about other people's feelings, for once; to know that they wouldn't give enough of their hearts to him for him to worry about stepping carefully to avoid treading on them.

There's a price that comes with being loved so easily and so well.

Bruce's study is empty, too. Dick is hardly surprised. He's barely seen the man, outside of the time he woke in the cave, still half-asleep with pain-killers, and Bruce was a black-clad mountain sitting in the chair beside him.

He rumbled, "I'm sorry."

"Me too," Dick said. Tongue and eyelids heavy. "Didn't…manage to…catch them."

Bruce said nothing. Dick sighed, more strength slipping out of him, and he's still not sure if he had imagined it, the warm weight of a hand on his shoulder.

 

 

He finds Red Hood in the Narrows. He's on his stomach on the lip of a roof, rifle scope held to one of the eyepieces of his mask.

Nightwing sits soundlessly beside him, folding his legs under him.

Hood doesn't lower the rifle. "You know, coming back from the dead doesn't suddenly make us besties."

Nightwing says nothing.

"What, no smart-ass comment?"

"What's there to say?" Nightwing says. "I messed up."

" _Sorry_ would probably be a start for the brat," Hood says. "And the replacement."

"I've said it. Over and over, and I'll keep saying it, but they're still ignoring me."

Hood shifts on his makeshift tarp. "You seem to think I give a damn."

"Even Babs won't talk to me," Nightwing continues morosely.

"This may shock you," Hood says, "but it incredibly sucks when you think someone important to you is dead."

"Like I don’t know that?” Nightwing snaps, incredibly bitter.

Hood stiffens. His entire body language hisses, _don't_ , and Nightwing sighs. "Jay--" he begins.

But then there's a flash of movement in the building across from them. Hood's shoulder tenses, his finger drawing back on the trigger--

Nightwing seizes his wrist, yanking as the glass of the window across the street shatters. The rifle falls; Hood twists, making a grab for it even as he hisses curses at Nightwing and yanks his leg up to shove him away with the metal edge of his boot. Nightwing gasps, the air knocked out of him, but keeps his hold on Hood's wrist, twisting it behind his back. "Jason, _don't_ \--"

"The hell?!" Jason spits, flinging him off. Nightwing hits the gravel-covered rooftop, hard. "That was my fucking target, you fucking asshole--"

Nightwing rolls painfully back up into a crouched position, hand splayed across his ribs. "I'm not gonna let you shoot people while I'm sitting here, Jason!"

"You don't get to _let_ me do anything," Jason snarls. "You don't have any fucking say in what I do, and if you ever did, you sure as hell lost it when you decided to play dead. Fuck off."

He shoulders his rifle and vaults over the side of the building. Nightwing stumbles over to the lip of the roof, gripping his ribs.

But Jason is already gone, melted into the shadows of the street.

 

 

It's three a.m. when Alfred finds him in the kitchen, seated in a stool at the island counter with his head in his hand.

Alfred doesn't say anything. He just opens the refrigerator and removes a pitcher of milk. Pours some into a kettle and turns on the stove.

"I really messed up, Alfred."

Dick's voice is muffled. Alfred lets it hang in the air for a moment, and then he says, "Perhaps. But you are attempting to fix it."

Dick gives a laugh, a little wildly. "And failing." He lets out a breath of laughter again, but this time it sounds more tired than wild. "Maybe I should head to Bludhaven."

"No." Alfred's voice is firm. The kettle whistles, and Dick listens to the sound of his movements as he keeps his eyes shut against his hand. A cup is set in front of him, heat emanating from the ceramic. He drags his hand from his eyes. It's a mug of warm milk, streaked with honey.

He smiles despite himself. Looks up at Alfred. "Have I said thanks for forgiving me?"

Alfred smiles back at him, putting his hand on Dick's shoulder and squeezing. Then he draws his robe around him and says, "Bed when you're finished, Master Richard," in a voice that brooks no argument.

Dick smiles again and ducks his head in acknowledgement.

 

Alfred goes down to the cave. Bruce is sitting in front of the computer, his cowl pushed back from his head. He doesn't acknowledge Alfred's presence. Alfred stands there, just behind his chair, until nearly ten minutes have passed.

"What is it, Alfred," he says finally. Not looking away from the files open on the screen.

"I believe you know what it is, sir."

An exhalation. "They'll get over it eventually."

"Oh, doubtless they will," Alfred says. "Regardless, Master Dick has made efforts to apologize to his loved ones for his deception. Where are your endeavors toward the same?"

He lets his question hang in the silence. Then he turns and heads upstairs.

 

 

The next morning, Tim ignores the steaming bowl of oatmeal set at his place at the breakfast table to tear open a protein bar from the messenger bar slung over his shoulder. Bruce is already at the table, wearing a collared shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows that seems unwisely light for the still chilly spring temperatures outside. He says nothing, and Tim doesn't, either, as he slides into his chair and pulls the business section of the Gazette toward him.

Something slips out of it. A folded piece of white paper, and Tim picks it up at the edges with his fingertips as Damian's footsteps stomp down the stairs and enter the dining room. He stops in the doorway and eyes them both with narrowed eyes, then rounds the edge of the table to his place, where a neatly folded slip of paper also waits.

He picks it up distastefully. "What's this?"

"A list," Tim says, reading it.

"I can see that, _Drake_ ," Damian says testily. "What's it _for_?"

"We're going on a trip," Bruce says.

"Will you be informing anyone else of this trip?" Damian says. "Or are you just going to send us off and let everyone believe we're dead?"

Silence for a moment. Tim says nothing, but his eyes burn like coals in silent agreement of Damian's words.

Dick comes into the dining room at that moment. "What's the big emerg--" He stops when he sees the tableau around the table. He doesn't ask, "Is everything okay?" because clearly it isn't, but his eyebrows rise.

"Master Richard," Alfred says. "I took the liberty of gathering your things for you." He wheels a carry-on suitcase from the corner and presents the handle to Dick, who takes it with a confused expression.

"Go pack," Bruce tells the other two boys.

"I'm not going anywhere," Damian declares, as Tim rolls his eyes and picks up his bag, standing from his chair with the rest of his protein bar crammed into his mouth. He heads for the door to the garage.

Damian throws them all disgusted glances, then gets up to follow him. Dick looks down at the table, digging his knuckles into his knees.

There's a thud from Bruce's study, where the entrance from the manor to the Batcave is located. They all turn to look at the doorway.

There's a sound of scuffling, and angry sounds, and then Cass appears in the doorway, a pair of zip-tied ankles clutched under one arm. She smiles brightly at all of them, though a bruise is starting to bloom at the corner of her mouth, and comes more fully into the room to reveal Stephanie behind her, blonde hair a mess. Stephanie, in turn, is making an effort to hold the shoulders of the man whose tied ankles Cass is holding; that man is a very, very angry-looking Jason Todd.

"Special delivery!" Steph chirps. "Courtesy of Batgirls Incorporated!"

Cass reaches down and pulls the duct tape from over Jason's mouth.

"What the FUCK," Jason explodes. "Did you put them up to this?"

"Language, Master Jason," Alfred says, but is ignored as Jason continues to rage. "You've got no fucking right, I oughta tear your fucking balls off--"

"We don’t have balls," Cass says in her careful deliberate way, looking to Stephanie for confirmation. Steph nods vigorously.

"Not you," Jason says, although he looks very disgruntled. "These asshats--"

Dick holds up his hands. "I had nothing to do with this."

"Nor I," Tim says.

"I wish I had," Damian says with dark ferocity.

"Enough," Bruce says. "We're going on a trip, and that's that. Stephanie, Cassandra, thank you for your help. Jason, Alfred has packed a suitcase for you."

"I'm not going anywhere," Jason says, cursing as Stephanie drops him onto the floor with a thud. Cass lets him down a little more gently, patting his zip-tied ankles as if in apology. "What is this, some sort of Outward Bound schtick to get all the baby birds talking again?" He twists, getting his bound wrists to his feet so that the blade that suddenly appears from the toe of his boot can cut through the ties, freeing his hands. "No fucking thanks."

"It's not a request," Bruce rumbles.

"Do I look like a give a fuck?" Jason says. He cuts his ankles free, then unfolds to his feet, pointing at Dick and Tim. "I don't got a problem with Dickiebird being alive. Alive, dead, I don't give a fuck. It's these two douchewads who do."

Something squeezes Dick's hand. He looks down to see Cass beside him, her slender calloused fingers wrapped around his. She looks up at him with a sad empathy in her dark eyes.

He squeezes her hand back.

"Let's put it this way," Steph says. "Oracle said, no trip participation, no tech assistance for the next, oh, ten years."

That gives them all pause, except Damian, who scoffs. "I don't need her assistance."

Tim is looking at Jason, who returns the look reluctantly but holds Tim's gaze before finally making a frustrated sound and looking away. Dick watches them and nearly starts when Tim's eyes flick to his.

"Fine," Jason says. "But I ain't happy about it."

Cass squeezes Dick's hand again.

 

 

Dick tries to get Bruce's attention on the way to the plane, but the silence in the car is painful. Despite the spacious dimensions of the Bentley, it becomes cramped with the five of them as passengers, and Jason immediately calls shotgun by sliding into the front seat next to Alfred with his duffel bag in his lap and a murderous expression that warns anyone to try to take it from him. Damian harrumphs and refuses to sit next to anyone but Tim, which leaves Tim looking bemused, but he allows himself to be shouldered over from the window so that Damian can sit next to it, glaring angrily out at the passing scenery with his hoodie drawn up over his head.

There's a Wayne Enterprises private jet waiting in the equally private air strip on the outskirts of town, not far from the manor. The pilot, a man with brown hair and a neatly pressed uniform, nods at them as they head up into the plane. The copilot takes the luggage from everyone except Jason, who pulls his duffel, slung cross-wise over his chest, more closely to his side and shakes his head. Dick can make out the tell-tale shape of a handgun bulging against the side of the bag, and Damian must notice, too, for he demands loudly, "Why is Todd permitted to bring weapons and I'm not?"

Everyone ignores him except Alfred, who raises an eyebrow. "I highly doubt you are without weapons, Master Damian."

Damian harrumphs.

They've never all been on the plane together. Tim has been on it with Dick, and Dick with Damian and Tim, and Damian with Bruce, or Tim with Bruce, or Jason with Bruce, years and years ago, but never all of them together. There's no uncertain pause, though; Damian beelines straight for the single seat set against the miniature bar, plopping down with his knees drawn up to his chest, pushing ear buds into his ears beneath his hood and immediately ignoring the rest of them. Bruce goes to one of the large reclining seats set beside a window, sitting down and looking out of it at the landing strip outside. Tim says something quietly to Jason, who tears his eyes away from the painfully familiar and just as painfully _un_ familiar dimensions of the private plane with a "tch" and slides into the seat across from Tim, who pulls out a miniature chess board and begins to set it up on the table between them.

Dick slides into the seat across from Bruce. The plane is spacious enough that a good two feet are present between their knees, and they each have their own window to look out of. Bruce's gaze stays fixed on the view outside his own except for a glance at Dick. There's nothing but its usual assessment in it, sweeping across Dick to make sure his seat belt is fastened, as if he's still a child being granted the privilege of riding shotgun in the Batmobile, and then it returns to the window. As if Birdwatcher, and Mr. Malone, never happened.

Dick looks out the window, hand coming up to his chin, knuckles digging into his cheek. He watches as the lines painted on the tarmac begin to speed, then streak, by outside as the plane begins to taxi down the runway.

 

 

Several hours into the flight, no one's spoken, except Jason's occasional angry outbursts when Tim comes close to checkmating him. It happens more rarely than Dick would have expected; the times he glances over, Tim's forehead is actually creased in concentration, and Jason looks smug, an uncharacteristically youthful smirk on his face as he watches Tim study the board. When he senses Dick's gaze on him, though, and their eyes meet, the smirk vanishes to become his usual scowl. He looks back at the board.

The cockpit door opens. One of the uniformed pilots steps out, the brown-haired man from before. He nods at Dick and Bruce, who are the only two to make eye contact with him. Dick nods back with a brief smile, and the pilot heads for the small bathroom located at the back of the cabin.

He's just reached under his seat to reach for the tablet in his bag when alarms shrill to life. In the same instant, the cabin depressurizes with a hiss and whoosh of air that tears past Dick's ears.

Jason throws his legs out to pin Damian into his seat and Tim into his as the plane begins to judder. Oxygen masks bounce down out of the overhead compartments.

Dick heads fore, Bruce aft, each bracing themselves with hands against the cabin seats as Damian and Tim fumble the oxygen masks over their faces. The door to the cockpit flops open when Dick reaches it; he grabs it just in time, as the plane hits a particularly rough patch of air and shudders violently beneath his feet, pitching him left. He shoves himself through the doorway.

The co-pilot is slumped over the console, mouth slack and eyes staring. Dick presses his fingers beneath his jaw looking for a pulse and finds nothing.

Bruce appears at his shoulder, hand braced against the bulkhead. "The pilot went through the emergency hatch."

Dick's already sliding into the empty pilot’s seat, studying the console. He recognizes the commands, but-- "The controls aren't responding. Get the others out."

"Let me try," comes a demanding voice behind both of them.

"Out!" Bruce barks. Damian goes ramrod straight, and so does Dick: two Robins conditioned to obey the Batman voice. Damian just as immediately scowls, but he pushes back into the cabin, just in time for Jason to strap a parachute harness from the emergency compartment under the chess table onto him. Tim's already buckled into one, his face pale but composed. "What did you find?"

Bruce shakes his head and reaches for the row of parachute packs still in the compartment. One he tosses to Dick, and the other he pulls on himself.

"So, what?" Jason yells over the racket of rushing air. "We're jumping?"

"The pilot wouldn't have jumped at these coordinates unless there was something close," Dick shouts back. "The sooner we jump after him, the closer we are to whatever he was aiming for."

"Yeah, except he could've had someone waiting to scoop him up," Jason shouts back, but he's following Tim toward the back of the cabin, where the hatch is shaking violently, only partially shut. "Too bad you didn't pack your wings, Swan Princess!"

Tim shoots him an Eat Dirt and Die look, bracing himself against the bulkhead.

"Dick will have the dinghy." Bruce's rumble is only just audible over the roar of escaping air and rattle of the plane beginning to come apart. "Go!"

Tim nods and shoves open the hatch. He grabs Damian's hand and, before the boy can protest, he jumps.

Damian's angry shout curls back up to them through the air. They all look at one another.

Jason is the next to move. "Worst family vacation ever," he shouts, then steps out of the open hatch.

Dick looks at Bruce. A suspicion is growing inside him, a pressure that pushes on his lungs. Before Bruce can do anything, Dick shoves the dinghy at him and throws himself out of the plane.

Without goggles to protect his eyes, the cold air rushes into them, stinging. He narrows them as much as he can while still being able to keep sight of the blurry dark shapes that are his brothers beneath him. Beneath _them_ , there's a few wisps of cloud and, mostly, the stretching expanse of blue, blue Pacific ocean.

He tucks his arms in at his sides, twisting behind him to make sure Bruce is coming. He can imagine the sour look that's probably on Bruce's face, but there he is, a shape detaching himself from the larger bulk of the jet. Dick lifts his hand in a wave, then turns back around and flattens his arms against his sides, pressing his heels together. Air slaps harder against his face as he picks up velocity, streaking toward the others.

"Spread out!" he shouts, hoping for his voice to carry to them somehow even as the wind steals it from his mouth. If only they had their comms. He makes motions with his arms, throwing them wide and feeling the abrupt jerk in his motions, velocity noticeably slowed as he increases his resistance.

It takes a few seconds, but then Jason seems to get the message: He tucks one arm in close to his chest and abruptly veers off to the right, a wide distance opening up between him and the closer shapes of Damian and Tim. A few seconds later, Tim or Damian must notice what's happening; Damian gives Tim a kick to give himself some extra momentum, soaring to the left. He spreads his legs wide like a mini human ninja star hurtling through the air, an image that makes Dick grin to himself despite the situation.

He glances up one more time to make sure Bruce is still with them, then spreads out his own arms and legs to slow his momentum so that he can begin to drift even further left than Jason, giving his brothers room for their parachutes to deploy without tangling in one another. Bruce, he trusts, will note all of their trajectories and adjust accordingly.

One by one, the younger Robins open their chutes. The bright yellow parachutes bloom in loud, flapping explosions of noise, and Dick breathes a sigh of relief when they're all far enough apart that none of their lines tangle.

The trickiest part is yet to come, though, and with the huge parachutes blocking them from his view, he can’t help them with it. He has to trust his brothers are smart enough--and he knows they are--to ditch their chutes before the hit the water so that the heavy harnesses don't drag them down.

The water is rapidly rushing up to meet him, he notices belatedly. He pulls his trigger, opening his parachute, and tries to spread his body wider to slow his momentum. The abrupt opening of the chute yanks him back with a sudden, violent movement, making him wince. He's going to have some wicked whiplash if they get out of this.

He hits the water with a splash, eyes clenched shut. Water rushes up his nose into his sinuses, stinging.

He struggles out of his harness, quashing the urge to take a breath. A few seconds later, the space behind his eyelids turns from dark red to plain dark, the shift telling him that his parachute has fallen and settled onto the water above him. He kicks out blindly, trying to swim around it to find the surface.

His fingertips scrape against the canvas material. He reaches further, trying to find where it ends. At the same time, something catches around his ankle and tightens, pulled taut by the weight of the parachute sinking in the water. Crap.

His lungs are burning by now. He fiercely ignores the reflex to inhale, pressing his lips together tightly and his eyelids together harder.

A hand closes around his ankle. The grip is tight and not careful at all; a second later he feels the glancing sting of a knife as the harness around his ankle is sliced.

He breaks the surface, gasping. Shaking his head to get hair and water out of his eyes. "Jay--?" Eyes stinging. "Jay--!"

"Here," comes the voice from beside him. "Jesus, Dick."

"J-je-s-sus y-yourself," he chatters back, finally finding his brother with his eyes. Jason looks disgruntled, spitting salt water from his mouth as it streams down his face, and there's a small red cut over his eyebrow, but otherwise he looks none the worse for the wear. "Thanks for the save."

"Whatever," Jason says. He's fumbling with something under the surface, probably his knife. "C'mon." He begins to swim toward something.

Dick twists in the water to follow him and sees the bright mustard yellow of the dinghy in the water, still hissing as it inflates itself. Bruce is pulling himself into it, and Damian and Tim are swimming toward it, hauling themselves up over the edge. Dick breaststrokes after Jason to do the same, slinging an arm over the inflated yellow fabric to pull himself up. A small hand grips his sleeve to help him.

He sprawls over the side, coughing. "Thanks, li’l D."

 _Hmph_ , says Damian's expression, but his little brother doesn't actually say anything, just sits back in the opposite side of the dinghy. It's about five feet in diameter, and they're all dripping a veritable lake into it. Dick's feet are submerged up to the ankles in the single loafer that survived impact with the water and the wrestling match with parachute rigging.

"Well," he says. "So much for the in-flight movie."

He's met by silence, except for Jason's muttered "Shut up, Dick." Bruce, for his part, merely pulls off his shirt, wrings it out over the side of the dinghy into the water, and pulls it back on. Dick wants to do the same, but his abdomen is kind of a mass of fire at the moment from the belly flop he did into the water.

Bruce's shrewd eyes take him in. "How are your stitches?"

"Torn," Dick says with a shrug that he quickly regrets, wincing as the movement pulls on said stitches. "Luckily, salt water's a disinfectant?"

He expects at least a snort from Damian, but the boy doesn't; instead, his eyes flick up, and Dick catches concern in them in the second that their eyes meet before Damian looks away.

Jason breaks the silence. "Tim?"

"Working on it." He has a black rectangle that doesn’t look like his phone in his hand.

"Are you getting signal?" Dick says in disbelief. He goes to fumble in his pocket for his own phone, but it doesn't even light up when he presses the button.

 "No," Tim say shortly. "This is something else."

After a moment of silence, Dick raises an eyebrow. "Care to elaborate?"

"No."

Dick feels a sting. He hides it, though, looking at the others. Bruce looks impassive, Damian angry, which is his default in any situations where he finds himself inconvenienced or scared, and Jason is looking over Tim’s shoulder as they both ignore the rest of them. He can’t help missing Helena. When she was mad at him, she didn’t hide it, but she didn’t put it in the way of whatever mission they were on. She told him she was mad and let him find a way to fix it. Of all the things he’s missed about his family, the dark brooding simmer of grudges that go unvoiced isn’t one of them.

“Sorry, you guys,” he says, because he’s used to having to be the one to take the first step, to extend the olive branch.

“It’s not your fault,” Bruce says.

“Yeah, it’s yours,” Jason says, looking at Bruce. “So how ‘bout you call Supes and get us offa this shitcan?”

Bruce says nothing.

“What?” Jason says. “There’s no way you guys haven’t arranged some kinda code word that makes him drop everything to come find you.” He leers.

Bruce’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t rise to the jibe. All he says, tersely, is, “He’s off-planet.”

“Kara, then.” Dick looks at Damian. “Aren’t you two friends?”

“Also off-planet,” Tim says as Damian’s face turns redder than the heat warrants. “Kon, too. Apparently it was a Super thing.”

Jason crosses his arms. “Convenient.”

Dick’s forehead creases in real concern. “Bats and Supers out of commission at the same time—are we sure someone didn’t manipulate this?”

“No,” Bruce says. “This trip was Clark’s idea.”

Even Tim looks up at that. They all stare at Bruce, who doesn’t waver under the scrutiny. Damian, his eyebrows knitting thunderously, seems about to say something until he remembers that he isn’t talking to Bruce, and he huffs and looks away.

“Got it,” Tim says suddenly.

“Got what?”

Tim points over Dick’s shoulder. “That way.”

“What that way?”

“Land,” Tim says impatiently. He gives the device in his hand a little wave. “I planted a tracker on the pilot before he jumped.”

“Ignoring the question of how you’re able to track a signal without cell service,” Dick says, “what makes you think we’re not just heading in the direction of a corpse?”

“In my experience, corpses aren’t capable of fifty mile-per-hour movement,” Tim says, deadpan.

A smile quirks Bruce’s lips. Jason gives Tim’s shoulder a shove that is probably meant with friendly intentions but makes Tim stumble forward in the dinghy and grimace over his shoulder at him.

“All right.” Jason starts to shimmy out of his sodden jeans, kicking off his combat boots. “Let’s get moving.” ~~~~

Dick moves to follow Jason into the water, but Bruce pushes him back down with a hand on his shoulder, casting a swift and meaningful look at his abdomen. Dick sits back down, hand pressed automatically to the torn-out sutures there. Bruce strips down to his undershirt and boxer-briefs instead, scars crisscrossing his arms and legs. Jason gives a wolf’s whistle that Bruce ignores as he lowers himself silently into the water next to Jason. They both grip the edge of the dinghy, maneuvering it into the direction Tim indicates with his hand and beginning to kick.

 

 

Bruce’s kicks are steady and powerful, and the look of concentration on Jason’s face below his streak of white hair as he concentrates on making his just as strong and steady would be amusing if it wasn’t also sad. He’s almost scowling at the dinghy where his hands stay clasped around the flimsy rigging that rings its circumference.

“Ease up the grip there, Jay,” Dick says quietly. “You’re bleeding.”

Tim looks up at that, but Jason scowls at both of them and pulls his hand down, out of their sight. “Sure would be a good time for your swan wings, replacement,” he says sarcastically.

Tim gives Jason a hard look that says _I know you’re scared but you don’t have to take it out on me._ “You already used that joke.”

Jason makes a “che” sound and goes back to kicking. Bruce continues as silently as ever.

Nearly an hour passes. Dick, who has watched the strain increasing on Jason’s flushed face, says, “Okay, break time.”

Jason begins to scoff, but Bruce, who has probably been keeping an eye on the same thing Dick has, lifts himself into the dinghy without protest. Jason, after a minute, follows suit.

“I will go next,” Damian announces, to none of them in particular.

Tim hands the tracker to Jason. “Me, too.”

“Great,” Jason says. “We’ll move three feet an hour with you shrimps.”

Tim shoots him a _what did I just tell you_ look. Like Bruce, he strips down to his boxer-briefs, which are some sort of sleek under-armor, before climbing into the water; Damian removes only his hoodie and shoes. He looks achingly young in his jeans and bare feet, and Dick moves forward, again, to take his place in the water instead. But Damian says sharply, “Down, Grayson,” and, with Bruce’s hand on his shoulder, he sinks back down. He feels stupidly useless as his little brothers begin to propel the dinghy forward and Jason cups his hand to his lap, flexing and opening his fingers.

Tim and Damian switch off with Jason and Bruce twice more before land comes into distance on the horizon. Jason gives a heartfelt “thank _fuck_ ,” and even Damian looks relieved. They’re all burnt nearly as brown as Damian from the day in the sun, though with significantly more of a red undertone, and Dick hasn’t been this thirsty since those days in the desert with Midnighter, that baby clutched close in his arms. He wonders where she is, how she’s doing.

“Dick.” Bruce’s voice breaks into the blurry thoughts, and he blinks, focusing on him.

“Mmm?”

Bruce doesn’t say anything, just scrutinizes him. Dick straightens automatically under the examination, forcing himself to pull out of the sun-daze. “I’m okay.”

Bruce makes an unconvinced sound but doesn’t push any further.

 

 

The island is small, perhaps three miles across from what can be estimated with the naked eye from their vantage point as they float toward it. The sun is finally close to the horizon by the time they drag themselves over the sand bar up onto the beach, the light more golden yellow than white-hot. As they pad up onto the sand, the long shadows cast by the trees to which the shore gives way fall over them, shielding them for the first time in hours from the sun’s heat. Jason sighs in relief, closing his eyes for a minute to feel the coolness spread across his burnt face. A few feet away, Dick gives a pornographic moan of happiness.

“Shut up, Dick,” Jason says without opening his eyes. Then he does open them, to look over at Tim. His hair has started to dry, crusted against his forehead with salt. “Any line on the bozo, Timmy?”

Tim is frowning down at the transmitter. He gives it a shake, as if that’ll do anything, then sighs, the air blowing his hair off his forehead. “The signal’s gone.”

Damian is scowling. “Convenient.”

“Everything about this is,” Bruce rumbles.

“Are you sure the signal’s gone?” Jason reaches for Tim’s phone. “Maybe you just—”

“I think I know how to work my own tech, Hood,” Tim retorts, voice acidic, and Jason drops his hand, ears burning. He feels stunned and embarrassed and angry all at once. Fuck him for thinking he was close enough to Tim to have any expectations anyway. “Fine, have it your way, princess.” He heads into the forest.

"Hey!" Dick shouts. "We can't just split up!"

"Why not?" Jason sneers. "Not like you guys have a plan to get off this thing anyway."

"We need food and shelter," Bruce says. He's squinting off into the foliage like he hasn't been listening to them at all. "Damian, you're in charge of finding food. Jason, go with him."

"I don't want to be with _Todd_ ," Damian says, affronted.

Jason gives him a dirty look of his own.

"Tim and I will put together shelter," Bruce says, ignoring them both.

"What's Queen Big Bird gonna do, huh?" Jason demands.

"Dick's still wounded. Best if he rests for now."

That shuts them both up, Jason crossing his arms over his chest and glaring into the dense foliage. Damian does the same, except his eyes flicker toward where Dick has gone to sit propped up against a tree trunk. In the shade from the foliage above them, he looks pale under his tan again, and the heel of his hand is pressed surreptitiously against his belly.

"Fine," Jason mutters, stuffing his hands into his sodden jacket pockets. "C'mon, brat," and crashes into the forest.

Damian glares another second before heading after him, his footfalls silent compared to Jason’s. Once they’re out of Bruce’s earshot, Jason lightens his footsteps to be just as silent, and Damian casts a glance over at him. 

“I didn’t realize you were capable of making less noise than a stampede of bison, Todd.”

Jason casts him his own narrow-eyed look. “We were trained by the same people, kid.”

Damian's lips compress at the reminder. Jason takes no note of it, eyes scanning the dense underbrush for edible plants. They travel near-silently that way for a quarter of an hour or more, picking their way through the dense green undergrowth, before Damian stops short abruptly.

Jason glances back at him. Damian's eyes are fixed on something directly in front of his face--a loop of vine hanging down from the branches above them which Jason realizes after a moment isn't a vine at all, but a snake.

He snickers. "Found a girlfriend?"

Damian's expression is murderous as he ducks under the snake. "I could kill you with its venom."

"First death threat I've heard from you in a while," Jason says. "Thought you'd lost your edge, baby bird."

"I could slit your throat in less time than it would take you to blink," Damian declares.

"Uh huh." Jason isn't paying attention to him anymore, his attention caught by a spray of white flowers cradled in the parting roots of a tree a few feet from them. He stoops to peer under their leaves, holding the flowers out of the way. Beneath are several small green fruits growing from the same stalks. "Jackpot."

Damian crouches closer to study them, though not before glancing above and around him to make sure there are no other snakes hanging around. "What are those?"

" _Aas_." Jason plucks the fruits from their stems, handing them over his shoulder to Damian. Damian scowls at being treated like a packhorse but bundles them into his salt-stiffened denim pockets. "Not to be confused with _ass_.” He smirks. “You can eat the nuts."

Damian sniffs one gingerly, not falling for the dirty joke. "How do we know you're not trying to poison us?"

"You don't." Jason creaks back to his feet, one his hand on his knee to push himself up, and heads to the next group of white flowers a few feet away.

They gather fruits in silence for several minutes, the only sound that of their sodden boots crushing the moist soil and growth underfoot. Then:

“You’re favoring your hand.”

Jason glances over. Damian’s eyes are narrowed.

“Gotta save it for funner activities,” he says with a leer. “If you know what I mean.”

“Funner isn’t a word.”

“What do you know,” Jason says. “English isn’t even your first language.”

“It’s my third,” Damian retorts. “And I still speak it more fluently than you.”

“No wonder you don’t have any friends,” Jason counters, moving onto the next cluster of _aas_ flowers while keeping his hand tucked into his jacket pocket.

“I have friends,” Damian says wrathfully. He stomps after him.

“Name three.”

Nose in the air. “I could challenge you to do the same.”

“I’ve got friends,” Jason says. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m part of a non-Bat team.”

“Ah, yes—the drug addict and the exiled alien.”

“Lots of judgment there for someone who was excommunicated by his mom.”

“I hate you.”

“Feeling’s mutual,” Jason retorts. He finds an orange pinecone-looking thing and shifts his arm to transfer the rest of his load into the crook of his bad elbow so he can pick it up. “Here. Grab these, too.”

Damian glowers for a full thirty seconds before accepting the fruit. “What is it?”

“ _Faach_.”

“My mother didn’t teach you all of this,” Damian says, almost challenging.

“How would you know?” Jason says flippantly. “Maybe she taught me more than she did you.”

Damian’s mouth twists. Almost sadly, before he remembers to knit his eyebrows angrily, and Jason takes pity on the kid. “There was another assassin broad who trained me. A lot uglier than your mom.”

“Of course she was. There is no one more beautiful than my mother.”

Jason snorts. “Misplaced loyalty, but okay.”

Damian locates several more _faach_ fruits and bundles them into the front pocket of his hoodie. Eventually he breaks the silence with “Who was she?”

Jason smiles at the jealousy in his voice. “Her name was Ducra. Super-ancient old lady. Your mom introduced us.”

“Why wasn’t I taught by her?”

“I dunno the answer to that, kid.”

Damian is quiet. Jason looks over at him, taking in the petulant mouth, the vulnerable brow. The kid’s really only ten, for all the hard-assery he dishes out, and Jason tosses a _faach_ fruit at him. Damian snaps back to attention just in time to catch it, and directs a scowl at Jason.

“Don’t give yourself such a hard time,” Jason says. “Maybe you didn’t need the extra teaching.”

Damian doesn’t seem convinced.

“Or,” Jason says, “maybe you were more than just cannon fodder to her.”

He stuffs one last _aas_ bunch into his jeans pocket, then turns back in the direction they came. He can sense Damian’s eyes on him. “C’mon, let’s get back.”

“…you are competent, Todd.”

Jason snorts. Doesn’t say anything else. But he does give the kid’s hood a tug to pull it over his head as he passes Jason down the path.

 

 

“You can’t give me the silent treatment forever.”

Tim glances over at Bruce. His arched eyebrow says, _oh yes I can._

Bruce’s mouth compresses. He says nothing more, and nor does Tim. The only sound is Tim’s Converse, ill-suited to the terrain, stepping through the undergrowth. He moves with far less noise than Jason did, at least, but he hasn’t been trained to move silently in an environment made of lush plants and soil instead of cement and litter the way Damian likely has. He does his best to aim for areas of soft humus instead of spots where fallen branches lie, keeping his ears and eye trained meanwhile for any sounds of running water or objects they could use to contain said water. Jason’s ridiculous red helmet would actually be helpful at a time like this, something he has no intention of telling Jason when they get back.

Bruce must be keeping an eye out for the same thing, because about ten minutes into their trek, he sets down the collection of long dry palm fronds he has collected and says, “Tim.”

Tim pauses, looking over. He’s carrying two fallen branches that looked promising, and these he drops beside Bruce’s, following Bruce’s pointed gaze up into what appears to be a spindly kumquat tree nestled among the greener trees here in the thick of the foliage. There is an especially curved frond extending from it, drooping toward the ground, heavy with orange nut-sized fruits, but not close enough to be reached from the ground.

Bruce stoops. Tim steadies himself with hands on either of Bruce’s huge shoulders and steps into his clasped hands. A moment of slight vertigo as Bruce rises; Tim sways, automatically gripping Bruce’s shoulders harder, but Bruce doesn’t waver. He lifts and lifts, and Tim, after a quick inhalation, steps one foot at a time onto Bruce’s shoulders, staying in a crouch as Bruce transfers his hold to Tim’s ankles, big hands closing around his calves so that his thumbs digging gently into the grooves of his gastrocnemius muscles. Tim takes another breath and unfolds slowly out of his crouch. Dick would have been done already, but Tim doesn’t have his grace, or assurance, and he reaches up to close his hands around the rough fibrous texture of the frond to pull carefully. Bruce takes one slow step backward to give Tim extra leverage; the frond groans, and Tim pulls, and it comes away from the trunk with a ripping sound, crashing to the ground.

Bruce crouches. Tim steps down onto the ground again, pulse thumping. The slopes of Bruce’s trapezius are very strong and steady under his hands. He resists the urge to huddle under the shelter of those big shoulders like the small Robin he once was, hiding under the safe tent of Batman’s cape.

He doesn’t move his hands from Bruce’s shoulders. “I’m angry.”

Bruce’s quiet gaze. “Understandable.”

 _I’m as angry at Dick as I am at you._ That’s the worst part of it. Tim doesn’t realize the feeling until it travels through his brain, not making it to his mouth. _Dick isn’t supposed to be like you._

The words stay inside him. Bruce shoulders the new frond along with the others, and they continue on their way.

 

 

The sunlight is starting to turn long and golden by the time they make it back to the shore. Jason and Damian are already there, arguing over what appears to be the beginning of a campfire as Dick blows gently onto the kindling, his blue eyes orange in its light. Bruce crowds him out of the way, crouching down and coaxing the sparks to catch himself with careful, abdominally-controlled breaths. He eyes Dick balefully while he does so, for having taken on an activity that puts strain on his abdominal muscles. Dick says nothing, sitting back down on the sand in defeat.

“Here,” Jason is telling Tim, “have some ass and fuck fruit,” and Tim is giving him a look of Supreme Disgust, and Damian, despite himself, looks amused, which in turn Jason is quite clearly feeding off of if his smug expression is anything to go by. Bruce rolls his eyes as he blows. Dick smiles wistfully, and as the kindling finally catches and crackles up into a substantial flame, Bruce sits back on his knees next to him, the warmth of their hips touching. When Dick looks over, though, Bruce’s eyes are on the horizon, distant.

Their meal of fruits passes mostly in silence as the sun sinks lower and lower toward the horizon. The last streak of orange has cleared from the sky when Bruce rises.

“Whoah, hey.” Dick cranes his head back to look up at him. “Where are you going?”

“Maybe the man’s gotta take a piss, Grayson,” Jason says.

Bruce grunts and, instead of heading toward the latrine that Damian was placed in charge of digging, under great protest, just beyond the tree line, begins down the shore.

“Hey,” Dick says, starting to his feet. “Bruce, you can’t go off on your—”

“Stay here,” Bruce rumbles.

“No way!” Dick scrambles after him. “Exploring can wait until tomorrow, Bruce, wait till it’s light out, for God’s sake—”

Bruce ignores him, of course, his stride lengthening. “Keep an eye on them,” he says, and tosses his Swiss Army knife back at Dick.

“Bruce—” Dick begins in A Tone, but Bruce ignores him, setting off.

“Uh-oh, Mama Bat,” Jason says from behind him as Bruce’s silhouette fades into the darkness. “Is it time for marriage counseling?”

Dick turns from watching Bruce disappear to give him a _you suck, Jay_ look. When he turns back around, Bruce’s silhouette is completely gone.

His hand tightens around the knife, his mouth tightening, too. On edge from not being allowed to do anything useful all day and from being ignored by his brothers, this bullshit from Bruce really pisses him off.

He paces several meters out into the darkness, toward the near-invisible line of the water, the sound of the hissing foam hitting his ears like some sort of echolocation. Breathing in the spray, he makes himself exhale slowly. Has a sudden memory of doing the same thing at St. Hadrian’s, trying to suffocate the sudden desperate rage, the desperation. The _nothing is ever going to be the same again._

He turns back to the fire. His brothers are an outline of sullen shadows in the dancing orange glow from the flames, Jason’s broad outline poking the kindling with a stick as Damian and Tim’s smaller silhouettes sit with their knees drawn up to their chests and arms wrapped around them, glaring into the flames, on either side of him.

He forces looser his grip on the army knife. He starts back toward the light of the fire, his bare feet slipping and sliding in the easy give of the sand.

Deliberately, he drops down next to Damian, between him and Tim. “Thanks for finding food.”

Jason shrugs. The other two don’t say anything.

“C’mon,” Dick says in a voice more jovial than he feels. “You guys can’t ignore me forever!”

Tim and Damian exchange looks like _that's what he thinks._

"Any idea where we are?" Dick continues. “My geography isn’t what it used to be.”

“Well,” Jason says when neither of the other two respond, “we ain’t in Kansas.”

“That you for that incredible insight,” Tim says.

Jason glowers over at him. “You wanna pry those panties outta your ass-crack, princess?”

“I don’t think I do.”

“Guys, stop.”

“Shut up, Dick,” Tim and Jason say at the same time. Then they Venom-Eye each other some more.

“What’s going on?” Dick says. “I thought you guys were super-team while I was gone.”

“We were,” Jason says. “Apparently now that big brother’s back, little Timmy’s got no use for the big bad Hood.”

“That is NOT what’s going on,” Tim says. “God, Jason, could you _not_ make things about your issues for once?”

“Okay, stop,” Dick orders. “Somebody’s going to say something really hurtful and then we’ll all be sorry.” Jason and Tim keep glaring at each other but don’t say anything more. “How about this—time for some sleep! What do you think, three-shift watch?”

“Fine,” Tim says briefly. “Who’s first?”

"Me," Dick says. "I got to rest already, you guys didn't."

"You sure we can trust you to keep watch?" Jay challenges. "You’re not just going to take off?"

Dick doesn’t flinch, but it must be a near thing. They’re all quiet, as if in guilty silence, and then Jason says, “Whatever,” and flips over onto his side, back to the rest of them. Damian and Tim follow suit.

 

 

Jason doesn’t sleep, though. He lies there in the flickering firelight, his hand throbbing mindlessly in his pocket, listening to the rustle of trees and the constant _shuuuussshhhh-shuuuuusshhhh_ of the water.

Hours pass. The moon inching higher, its gray light replacing the fading orange of the fire dwindling to embers.

He hears Dick shift, and sigh.

He rolls up onto his ass to sit up. “My turn.”

"But it hasn't been--"

"Go to sleep," he says roughly.

Dick’s silhouette is still for a moment; then it shrugs. “Have it your way.” He crawls over to the patch of sand Jason left unoccupied a foot from Tim on one side and Damian on the other, and settles down with another sigh, this one of relief, and something inside Jason twists.

It’s not many minutes later that Damian has a nightmare. He doesn’t thrash or scream; his breathing just becomes harsh, his chest rising rapidly up and down in the darkness, and then all of a sudden he wrenches up, gleaming with sweat, eyes big and wet in the moonlight reflecting off the sand and water.

Dick stays very still, although Jason knows he’s still awake. Damian moves abortively toward him, then stops, breathing still rapid.

“Back to sleep, brat,” Jason says gruffly. “’s not your turn for watch yet.”

Another few beats of breathing, coming gradually under control. Then Damian says, “Silence, Todd,” and lies back down.

Turned toward Jason, Dick closes his eyes.

 

 

The gray horizon is streaked with orange by the time Bruce rounds back onto the area of shore where he can see the outline of the boys. There are three prone silhouettes in the sand around the small, almost-extinguished fire and a larger shape sitting up a little away from them, his big shoulders curved forward over his up drawn knees. Bruce is used to seeing him sit like that with the orange glow of a cigarette between his fingertips, but any he might have had must have been ruined by the saltwater. Instead Jason is merely staring into the guttering fire, the flames reflected in his eyes. They rise to follow Bruce as he treks closer through the sand, the irises green-flecked in the low light.

Bruce folds himself down a few feet away. “I’ll take watch.”

“Don’t need you to.”

Bruce says nothing, merely studies Jason from the corner of his eyes. His son’s jaw gleams with a sheen of sweat in the humid air. The sharp, hunger-hollowed angle of it is smooth, nothing like Bruce’s stubble-covered face and neck, and he thinks, not for the first and not for the last time, about the ways the Pit has taken Jason from them, and the ways it will continue to take him away from them. How long after they are all dead and gone he will continue on, his face that of a boy and his soul that of a man much older.

The suction of those thoughts is always there, and, as always, he pulls his mind from them, Odysseus plugging his ears with wax. “Dick?”

“Not dead.” Jason pulls a strip of bandage tighter around his hand with his teeth. Bruce recognizes it as part of the shirt he left behind to bundle up their gathered fruit and raises an eyebrow.

“Sorry.” Jason bares his teeth, not looking sorry at all. “Needed a bandage.”

Bruce’s eyes take in the dark drying blood evident on the material pulled tight over Jason’s palm. “What did you do?”

“Your demon kid got hungry,” Jason quips. “Didn’t realize he had a taste for human flesh.”

Whatever Bruce might have said in response to that, or what question he would have posed with his inescapable gaze, is cut off by Dick rolling over with a loud yawn. “Who’s eating human flesh? Are we that desperate already?”

“Did you find anything?” Jason asks Bruce.

“Yes.” He sets down the remains of the transmitter.

Jason’s sharp eyes take it in. “No dead body attached, I take it?”

Bruce shakes his head.

“So whoever Tim attached it to was enough in the know to pick up on it,” Jason says. “Huh.” He toes Tim in the ribs. “Wake up, Replacement.”

Tim rolls away from his boot, trying to pull a nonexistent blanket over himself. Damian, in the path of his roll, makes a displeased sound and kicks ineffectually at him. Tim groans and sits up, rubbing his eyes.

“Wake up, sissies,” Jason says. “Daddy Bats brought breakfast.”

“Shut up, Jason,” Tim mumbles automatically. His face is creased with sand, and so is Damian’s, as he sits up, too, blinking owlishly at them from beneath adorably bed-headed hair before his usual scowl presses into the lines of his face. He doesn’t quite manage to hide the relief that flits across his face when he sees Bruce has returned, though.

Tim is already focused on the remains of the transmitter, ignoring the fruit things Dick passes out them from their stash. “Where was it?”

“About three miles inland,” Bruce says. “I thought I smelled ozone.”

“Alien?” Tim says.

“Possible.”

Dick is frowning. “A _human_ engineering a Wayne family plane crash, I could get,” he says. “An alien? That’s…not good.”

“I don’t suppose you could think of any of your old Spyral buddies who have off-planet contacts and want us out of the way?” Jason says sarcastically.

Dick doesn’t deny it, is the thing, and Jason makes a “tch” sound and shoves his _aas_ fruit at Tim.

“Then why only maroon us?” Damian demands. “It makes no sense to go to so much trouble only to leave us alive. It’s cowardly.”

“Or sadistic,” Jason says. “It’s fucking torturing me right now thinking about how about I’m gonna die here with you dicks.”

“No one’s dying here,” Bruce says.

“Huh,” Jason says. “Why don’t I believe you? Oh wait.”

“Jason—”

“Fuck off.” There are spots of color burning in Jason’s face: more than just the sunburn from days in the sun. “I’m out of here.”

He stomps away. They all watch him go, Bruce stone-faced and Dick stung. He rolls to his feet to head after him, but Tim holds out his hand, motioning him back down. “I’ll go after him.”

Dick sits back down, his expression…bereft. He silently watches Tim start to pick his way through the sand after Jason.

Then, after another few heartbeats of silence and a glance over his shoulder at them, Damian gets up and starts after Tim.

It leaves Dick and Bruce sitting on the sand behind them. Dick swipes a hand through his salt-stiffened hair, digging his elbow into his knee. Bruce, beside him, is motionless, and Dick resents him with a heat that feels almost tangible.

He gets up. Striding, at first, and then jogging, running into the water until the shells dig into his feet with tiny knives and stitches dig the same way into his ribs, hard painful gasps of breath. He crouches in it, digging his toes into it, and lets the water break over him: his butt, his shoulders, his head. Cold groping water that drips into his eyes and stings them. He blinks against the salt, combs his fingers through his sopping hair and digs his palms into his brows.

When he feels numb with cold, goosebumps covering every inch of him, he stands. Turns. Bruce stands in the water a few feet away.

His rumbled voice barely carriers over the surf. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” He knows it’s the truth even though every selfish, childish feeling inside him rails otherwise. Why did you send me away. Why didn’t you try harder. Why didn’t you love me enough to keep me. “It wasn’t a unilateral decision, Bruce.”

Bruce says nothing.

He pushes his toes deeper into the water and watches the sand rise and billow. “Is this how it felt?” he asks quietly. “When you came back.”

Bruce gazes at him.

He murmurs, “Like you didn’t need me?”

Dick nods.

Bruce’s gaze slides to the water.

“Yes,” he says finally.

 

 

Clark is Skyping with his parents when the laptop chimes disappointedly with the sound of a disconnected call and a green pixelated avatar appears on the screen. “Clark.”

“Oracle!” He pushes back from his desk. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“A pleasure, I’m sure,” the computerized voice says dryly.

“Exactly,” he replies just as wryly. “What prompts the unexpected privilege?”

“Actually,” Oracle says. “I didn’t expect to be able to reach you. Apparently you were supposedly off-planet.”

Clark doesn’t quite squirm.

“Mmm,” Oracle says. “I’m looking for the whereabouts of our mutual friend.”

“Oh,” Clark says. “Him.”

Oracle waits.

“Last I heard, he was planning some father-son bonding.”

“And where was that being planned for?”

“You would have to ask our grumpy friend.”

“I would,” Oracle replies, “if he was reachable.”

Clark feigns surprise.

“Do you,” she says, “know anything about it.”

Clark deliberates on his response. “I may know,” he says slowly, “that they needed some time…forced to be together.”

Oracle is silent. Her silence, like her avatar on the screen, is unreadable.

“Without surveillance,” she says finally.

“I doubted any of them would appreciate spectators,” Clark says mildly.

“Uh-huh. And was our mutual friend complicit in the planning of this scheme?”

“…mostly.”

Another silence. “I think you better let me know where they are.”

Clark raises a brow warily. “What are you going to do with the information?”

Oracle waits.

Clark sighs and picks up his phone.

 

 

He already smells like a dead body. The sodden stiff fabric of Bruce’s shirt around his hand is thick with the smell of putrescence. He can smell the Pit, his skin is lined with sweat and goosebumps, and he shudders convulsively in his hoodie, teeth rattling in his skull.

At some point he comes back to himself. Enough to register that he’s sitting crammed up against the rough trunk of a tree. He makes himself breathe, and dig the heel of his good hand into his face, and pick up on the fact that there is someone a few feet away, watching him.

“Come out.”

Tim emerges silently from the undergrowth.

“Why,” Jason says, “am I not surprised it’s you?”

“Because I’ve been stalking you since you were twelve,” Tim says. “I’m predictable.”

That startles a laugh out of Jason.

“You’re not going to die.”

Jason’s mouth falls shut from its laugh.

“You’re not,” Tim says.

Jason’s not used to having to reassure other people with false platitudes. He only ever had to do it for himself, that night in the icy warehouse with his teeth splinters of bone in his bloodied mouth. Hot spit rushes to his mouth at the memory of it, his gorge rising. He swallows it down. “’Course I’m not.”

God, he wishes he brought a gun.

“Get lost,” he tells Tim.

“I am lost,” Tim says. He glances theatrically over his shoulder. “I’m depending on you to find our way back.”

Jason snorts despite himself. He doesn’t believe Tim’s ever been unprepared enough to get lost.

“Okay,” Tim says. “I may not know exactly where we are, but your angry stomp trail isn’t going to be hard to follow back to shore.”

“It almost implies you _want_ to be found, Todd.” Damian drops down out of a tree branch above Tim, landing in a crouch.

Jason tenses up like a cat about to bolt. Tim says quickly, “Damian, could you go back and get us some more bandaging? I think Jason’s dressing needs to be changed.”

Damian picks up on the subterfuge immediately. “You’re trying to get rid of me.”

“No,” Tim says quickly.

Damian glares at him. To both of their surprises, he doesn’t say anything, just flings a half-eaten _aas_ fruit at them, hard, and stalks back the way he came.

Jason didn’t miss how white his face was, though, the skin around his mouth bleached colorless by how tightly he compressed his lips. “I hope you’re planning to go after him.”

“No,” Tim says shortly. His face is white, too, around his tight mouth. He takes a step closer. “What’s going on?”

“We’re shipwrecked on a fucking island with no metas around to get us off it, that’s what’s wrong.”

“That’s not it,” Tim says. “What are you hiding, Jay?”

“Maybe I’m a little tense from being stuck with Goldie and the Bat for seventy-two hours straight,” Jason snaps.

“We’re not going to die here,” Tim says. “We might all get scurvy and lose a few teeth, but we’re not going to die.”

“It’s gotta be bothering you,” Jason says. “Nothing to brush your teeth with, what if you end up with a cavity, princess?”

“I just had my sealants reapplied,” Tim says placidly. “I should be good for a while. Your breath, though—”

Jason breathes intentionally in his face. Tim makes one. “You’re such a Neanderthal.”

“Someone’s gotta make up for your lack of stones.”

“Ha ha,” Tim deadpans. He looks up as a crack of thunder sounds from above them, accompanied by a flash of lightning two seconds later. “Come on. I don’t want to get stuck under a tree struck by lightning.”

Jason hangs back. Tim grabs his good hand and starts to drag him. Jason resists for a minute, face unreadable in the darkness under the trees, then relents and follows him.

It’s only because his eyes are on the ground during the next flash of lightning that he catches it. “Hang on.”

“What?”

Jason is crouching, picking something up. He holds up a scrap of fabric with his good hand, running his thumb across the suspiciously sturdy and silken weave. “This look red to you?”

Tim squints in the next flicker of light that flashes through the canopy. His eyes flick to Jason’s. “Yes.”

“Bruce said Supes is off-planet.”

Tim’s eyes are sharp. “He’s not the only one with a red cape.”

 

 

Dick watches the dark clouds rolling across the sky, then back again into the thick trees. He and Bruce hauled their meager things closer under the trees, just close enough to make sure that they weren’t the tallest things around for lightning to hit and but far enough to make sure none fell on them if they were struck, which took them only about seven minutes, and now it’s been another three minutes and none of his brothers are back yet. “Do you think we should—”

At that moment, footsteps become audible a few feet away. Tim emerges onto the sand, followed by Jason. “Hey!” Tim says. “We found—”

“Where’s Damian?”

Tim looks past him as though expecting to see Damian standing beside him. “What do you mean? We sent him back to you.”

Dick shoves past them, into the undergrowth.

“Wait,” Jason says, turning to follow him. “He didn’t come back?”

“No, he didn’t come back!” Dick snaps. “Why’d you leave him on his own?”

“It’s not like he gave us much of a choice,” Jason says, and beside him, Tim looks guilt-stricken.

“Stay here,” Bruce says, and heads into the trees after Dick.

 

 

Damian kicks his way through the overgrown rubbish sprouting from every viable tree trunk and patch of soil. Some of the plants are sticky, coated in some sort of sap, and others with thistle, clinging leaves, hanging fast to his jeans, and Damian misses, suddenly and fiercely, Titus and his sleek fur, the way he stands right next to Damian, his heavy tail hitting Damian’s legs as it wags back and forth.

The air is sharp with the scent and taste of an impending storm. He changes his course to climb up into the dark branches of a rough-barked tree, moving silently from branch to branch. The view, once he surfaces from the thick canopy, shows him a high bank of cumulonimbus piling over the horizon, the distant smudge of rainfall already covering the ocean horizon to his right. To the left, there is only the green slope of more forestry, rising up along the crest of low mountains that hide the rest of the island from sight.

Lightning flashes. He drops down out of the tree, landing in a crouch. Only a few seconds later, rain begins to fall loudly, a thick curtain that lashes the big leaves and pours down off of them when the weight becomes too much for the thin membranes to hold.

Damian pulls his hood over his head and continues on. A few hundred meters later, there is a large, uprooted tree that has slumped against its brothers, providing a small shelter, and Damian crouches under it, blinking raindrops from his lashes. In the dark humus revealed by the trailing roots of the tree, there are dark glistening things moving: worms, he sees, trying to wriggle away from and out of the puddles filling up in the soil.

He uses his finger to dislodge some of the soil from them, easing their progress. Watches the serpent-like flex and sway of their tiny bodies. His attention focused on the movements, he doesn’t notice the bird hopping down until it has already snatched one up.

“Hey!” he shouts in reflex.

The crested bird scarfs down the worm dangling from its beak, then squawks loudly back at Damian, unfazed. Damian scowls, and it flaps closer, cawing angrily. He falls backward on his rear, and it darts for another worm, hops away with its bounty in its beak.

The rain starts to fall harder, the drops bigger and closer together. Damian retreats further under the shelter of the tree: then, as a loud hiss comes from directly beside his ear, does _not_ jump and dive away.

When his heart rate has calmed down, he slows down, blinking around in the rain, and scrutinizes a likely tree before scaling it, pulling himself up onto one of the lowest branches, about two meters off the ground. Quiet cheeping sounds come from it as he pulls himself onto it; there is a small nest with three puffy brown chicks and the remnants of speckled egg shells inside it. Water is pooling in the base of the nest from all the rain. Damian struggles out of his clinging wet hoodie and crouches closer to hold it over the nest, protecting it from the worst of the deluge that makes its way through the overhanging canopy. A few drops drip from his hoodie tie, one landing directly into the open, expectant beak of one of the chicks. It snaps, then makes a disappointed sound, liquid black eyes reproachfully on Damian.

“Not my fault,” he mutters. Then, grudgingly: “Sorry.”

Maybe only a few minutes pass before a bird flaps up to perch on the opposite side of the branch from Damian: a crested bird like the one that ate the worms, if not the same one. Damian looks at it, and it looks at him. Squawks angrily, hopping gingerly closer to its nest. It hops backward again, cocking its head, considering him. Then it darts forward, one beady eye still on him, and regurgitates into the chicks’ beaks.

Damian grimaces. He pulls slightly, but not entirely, back, keeping his hoodie over the nest.

When the parent bird is done, it eyes Damian one last time, then caws and hops into the nest, the further driest spot away from Damian. Two of the chicks huddle up close to it. The third one toddles closer to peer curiously at Damian. It leans forward and pecks at his hand.

“Stop that.”

It eyes him, then pecks again, as if to make sure he really meant it.

“I mean it,” he assures the bird.

It puts its beak up snobbishly, as if offended by the response, and heads back to its brother and sister. Damian releases one corner of his hoodie and traces his finger smoothly down its soft feathery back, the tiny fragile bones underneath.

He jerks and nearly drops off the branch when a shout erupts almost directly underneath him. “DAMIAAAAAAN!”

The chicks erupt in a startled cacophony. The mutter flutters agitatedly, hopping up out of the nest and swooping at Damian.

Damian drops down from the branch. “Shush, Grayson!”

Dick blinks at him from under soaked hair. “Damian,” he says in relief. “Thank God.” And then Damian’s face is smushed against Grayson’s wet shirt, arms crushing him close. “ _Never_ scare me like that again.”

Damian pushes out of the tight hold. “Rich words from you.”

Grayson doesn’t reply. Damian, not meeting his eyes, struggles his sodden hoodie back over his head.

They just stand there silently for a minute, the silence interrupted by flashes of lightning and rumbled thunder, before Grayson chuckles.

“What.”

Grayson pushes dripping hair out of his eyes, cupping his other hand at his brow to shield his eyes from the rain. “I’m just remembering that speech I gave you about hoods when I could really use a hood right now.”

“Hmph.” Damian dugs his chin into his chest, hands deep in his front pocket.

After a while:

“I am sorry, you know.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Damian’s eyes stay on the tree behind Dick. “I thought you were different. You aren’t.”

Dick’s hand makes an aborted motion to ruffle Damian’s hair. He forces it back down to his side instead. “Maybe not. But if I could do it again—”

“What?”

Dick stares at Damian’s profile, the angry defiant mouth and brows. He stares, and wishes Damian could understand what he feels, and at the same time, that he never will—how Dick feels like there are pieces of himself he has lost. The sunniness that used to come naturally is a performance piece now, like the last of an eggshell fallen away. He can’t look at his Nightwing outfit anymore without thinking of how obvious it looks, how the electric blue finger stripes stand out as a target, when before the thought of the danger they invited made his blood sing.

He thinks of the man with guns for eyes and can’t imagine only being able to see Damian through a barrel. He thinks of the baby in the desert and remembers how, sometimes, he had imagined that the baby was Damian, thought of how if it was Damian in his arms he would never stop, never let him go, never let him die.

Losing Bruce had been like that desert, slogging on and on with a desperation born from knowing there was no light at the end of the tunnel: Bruce would never be back, and Dick was the only one, the only one, and if he stopped, everyone else would, too.

Damian is still waiting. His eyes rest on Dick with the same intent focus that sharpens Bruce’s, but in Damian’s there is hope. Guarded, but there.

Dick says, “I would’ve kidnapped you to be my back-up.”

Damian’s face twists like he’s biting down relief, or a smile. After a few seconds, he controls it and says, his dark brows knit back into their usual frown, “It wasn’t right of Father to send you into that without back-up.”

“I wouldn’t have let him send you guys,” Dick says honestly. “Don’t blame him, little D. He gave me a choice.”

“He always makes it a _choice_ ," Damian mutters. "If you’re the one who makes the decision, it’s your fault if it’s the wrong one.”

“That’s a little more cynicism than I’m used to hearing from you,” Dick says. “You been hanging out with Jay?”

Damian just grunts. “If you do something like this again, Grayson, I’ll hunt you down and pulls your intestines out through your nose.”

“There’s the Damian I know and love,” Dick says, and puts his arm over Damian’s soaked shoulder, pulling him close in a hug. Damian submits to it with a token harrumph.

They intersect with Bruce on the way back. His hand finds Damian’s shoulder, and he clasps it. Doesn’t let go until they get back to the beach, with its sodden sand. The sky is starting to lighten to deep blue, clouds starting to move away, just in time for night to fall completely.

Tim has managed to contrive somehow to keep some wood and ferns for kindling dry. They have a fire crackling in next to no time at all, a welcome warmth as the wind off the water starts to blow through their sodden clothes. Damian’s teeth manage to chatter even though he clenches his jaw tightly, but he makes no move to pull off his hoodie, which he pulled back on before he and Dick climbed down from the tree. He doesn’t like to expose the scar along his back, and Dick isn’t sure whether even Bruce has seen it. He sidles up close to Damian under the complained pretense of being cold, and tries to radiate to him what body heat he can.

Jason looks little better off, shuddering every now and then at his spot across the campfire. His face gleams from the drops of water trickling from his wet hair, and he eats very little, pushing his fruit over to Tim.

Tim pushes it to Damian, who ignores it. Tim sighs and looks at Bruce.

“You said this was Clark’s idea. What did you mean by that?”

Bruce’s eyes sharpen. “What did you find?”

Tim pushes a torn scrap of red fabric across the sand.

Bruce picks it up. He turns it over in his hand. “This isn’t Clark’s.”

“It’s not cotton,” Tim says. “Or silk, or polyester, or any sort of fabric I’ve encountered before except with the League.”

Bruce doesn’t say anything in argument to that. He says, instead, “He thought it would be a good way for us to reconnect. A trip somewhere distant and isolated so that we would be forced to be--.”

No one finishes the sentence.

“Were we plane-wrecked on purpose?” Tim says bluntly.

Bruce’s jaw and mouth tighten, the corners of his eyes. He says nothing, and that in itself is a sign that, turning over the facts in his head, he’s coming to the same conclusion as Tim.

“A red cape,” Dick says suddenly. “The pilot didn’t take a parachute, and he moved vehicle-fast—that could’ve been J’onn.”

“What about the dead copilot?”

“An illusion? If Zatanna was involved—”

“Does that mean they’re watching us?”

Jason’s voice is unexpectedly hoarse. Dick looks over and sees that his eyes look glassy, like he found a bottle of vodka somewhere and drank it straight. His face gleams with sweat, pale in the moonlight.

“Means they can come get us,” Jason stumbles to his feet. “Hey! Get down here, you dickwads!”

His voice rings out over the water. The sand. No echo responds.

“Jason,” Bruce rumbles.

Jason shoves off his hand. “This is your fucking fault,” he snarls, and shoulders out of the firelight and shoves down in the sand.

 

 

“I will take first watch,” Damian announces. Todd, several meters away, makes no sign that he heard, or cares; Drake murmurs some sort of assent; and Grayson is watching their father. He has walked off to some distance, the silhouette of a figure that could be looking out at the water or could be looking back at them, and Damian allows himself to wonder whether he’s trying to contact the Kryptonian before refocusing his attention upon his predecessors.

“I’ll take second watch,” Drake says in response to his expectant gaze, and lies down, although he does not close his eyes. He has the transmitter back in his hands, and he is fiddling with it, frowning at it with his eyes gleaming in the dark, every now and then casting glances at where Todd has curled up further from the rest of them, a dark shape outside the firelight.

“He’ll be okay,” Grayson says quietly to both of them. He lowers himself onto his side a safe distance from Drake, who still isn’t quite acknowledging him, and closes his eyes. His eyelashes cast long shadows across his face in the flickering light from the fire.

Minutes pass. Hours. The flames crackle. Damian stares into them and does not turn to look and see whether his father is still standing at the water line or whether he has left, again.

In the third hour, the dark shape that is Todd starts to make noises.

Damian eyes him uncertainly and casts a glance over his shoulder for his father. No silhouette can be seen, and he turns back to look over the fire at where the shape is shifting, making noises like pained panting. Todd has nightmares; they all know it, even though Todd makes a point never, _ever_ to sleep at the manor, because they were all there the time Todd got a faceful of Scarecrow’s fear toxin with no mask to filter the effects. Grayson hadn’t chivvied him and Drake out of the cave quickly enough to keep them from hearing how Todd sobbed and pled as Pennyworth struggled to inject a sedative into his veins.

He prowls closer. Heat fairly radiates from Todd, and now that Damian is closer, he can tell that he’s shivering. His breathing is harsh, shallow.

He creeps back to the campfire. “Grayson.”

Grayson comes awake in a split-second, his arm tensing under the hand on his shoulder. “What?”

Damian sits back on his heels and nods at Todd’s shape. Grayson’s brow furrows, and he rolls to his feet, striding over only to drop onto his heels next to Todd. “Jaybird?”

His voice is low and kind. Todd’s eyes crack open, and he blinks glazedly up at Grayson, cradling his right hand to himself with a hiss of pain. “What, Dickie?”

Grayson catches his hand. He unwraps the stained strip of shirt with painstaking carefulness. Todd’s hand underneath looks bad. It is mottled purple, the skin swollen and angry, oozing pus.

“Jay,” Grayson murmurs. Louder, he says, “Bruce!”

Todd seems to become lucid then, his eyes clearing somewhat at the volume; he blinks and snatches his hand back, wrapping it back up. “Fuck off, Dick.”

“Jay, that’s serious.”

“Yeah, so?” Todd says tightly. He finishes wrapping it up and tucks the dressing in under his sleeve, jaw ground together as a spasm of a shiver sweeps through him, fresh sweat breaking out on his forehead. Through clenched teeth, he says, “Not like there’s an ER to go to for an I&D.”

Father is there then, suddenly, a looming shape in the dark blocking out the orange light from the fire. In a movement too swift for even Damian to follow, he’s crouched next to Todd, immobilizing his wrist and yanking his sleeve up. Todd _screams_ in pain. There are purple streaks extending up his arm toward his elbow from his wrist, and Father’s jaw is tight as a vice.

“Start boiling water.”

Grayson takes off at a sprint.

“Get _off_ , Bruce,” Todd is snarling, trying to yank away, but Father isn’t letting it go; has Todd’s other shoulder in his grip and is hauling him up. Todd moves like he’s inebriated, legs clumsy and unsteady beneath him; Father sweeps him up and carries him to the fire where Drake is just waking up and looks startled and scared.

“Bruce--?”

“Here!” Grayson is running back from the water, holding Todd’s helmet—where did that come from?—cupped in his hands, the contents sloshing over onto the edges. He holds it over the fire, close to the flames, wincing at the heat licking his hands but not moving.

“What’s going on?” Tim sounds like a child, fear in his voice. “Jay—?”

“Who has the cleanest shirt?” Father says.

Damian hesitates. Then he takes off his hoodie, and his white t-shirt underneath it, feeling the wind stroke up his scarred spine. Father’s eyes sweep across him as he takes the shirt wordlessly from Damian.

“Hold him down,” he says briefly.

“What are we—”

“He said hold him down, Drake!” Damian snaps. He settles himself atop Jason’s shins, pressing down on his knees. Jason is still moving, but weakly, his gaze glazed. He doesn’t seem quite aware; is only fighting for the sake of it, the memory of needing to run. Drake looks uncertain, but stretches himself across Todd’s chest, pinning his arm and trunk at the same time.

“It’s boiling,” Dick announces tersely.

“Bring it,” Bruce orders.

He tears Damian’s shirt into four strips, dunking each along with his hands, one at a time, into the steaming water in the helmet. His muscles tense at the scalding heat, but he makes no sounds of discomfort, only wrings out two of them over the sand before bending over Jason’s hand. “Dick,” he says, and Dick moves immediately to hold Jason’s elbow and forearm braced over his knee, the helmet left nestled safely in a hollow of sand.

Father sets the two white strips on either side of the darkest part of Jason’s hand, where yellow-white fluid is beginning to seep from the center. Then, with his thumbs, he gives a sudden fierce squeeze.

Pus pours from the site.

Todd gasps “ _fuck_ ” and passes out.

Father is tight-lipped. He continues to press the putrescence from Todd’s palm, digging his thumbs into the soft compartments of his hand until what comes out is bloody red instead of purulent-smelling yellow. He rinses it clean with still-hot water from one of the shirt strips, then folds a third one up and presses it against the site, binding it in place with the fourth.

Damian is shaking. He doesn’t realize it until Grayson pulls him off of Todd’s legs and holds him close.

Drake looks like a child. He is pale and huge-eyed.

“C’mere,” Grayson says, and then they are both under his arms, Damian and Drake, being held close.

“You don’t have any way to summon them?” he says to Father, _sotto voce_. “Nothing?”

Father is as tight-lipped as he ever is beneath the cowl. His hands around Jason are gentle, though. He shakes his head as he tips cooling water into Jason’s mouth. Cups his mouth shut and massages his throat to make him swallow.

 

 

Dawn comes like a delusion, wavering with delirious heat. They haul Jason back to the shade of the trees, but there is no protecting him from the sweltering heat and humidity that wrings sweat from their scalps and skin. Jason oscillates between deathly still and feverishly restless, whispering for people who aren’t there and people who are.

“Jay,” Dick murmurs into Jason’s forehead. He’s motionless, right now, and that’s almost worse than listening to his dry lips call for his mom, _Ma, Mom, Alfie_. “Jaybird. Little Wing. We’re here. You’re okay. Bruce is here. B’s here.”

Still Jason’s eyes dart under their lids, terrified.

Dick squeezes his eyes shut. His insides roil with guilt. He knows exactly when Jason must have gotten the cut, when he was slicing Dick free of the parachute harness in the water; Dick’s the big brother, but Jason took care of _him_ , and now he’s dying. Again.

“We’re here,” he says again, uselessly. “Bruce is here, Jay. He’s here.”

He thinks of the Hypnos implants that sat in his optic discs and communicated what he saw back to his handlers. What he wouldn’t give for them now, for someone to be watching, someone to _know_ —

He presses his forehead harder against Jason’s clammy brow. Bruce sits across from both of them, hands white-knuckled on his knees and mouth white with tension.

 

 

Damian stares at Bruce and Dick where they sit beside Jason, mopping his brow. Tim feels, with the sick swoop of his insides that recognize one more thing to cram into his brain beside all the other anxieties writhing there, the ways in which he has fallen far short of the brother Damian needed while Dick was gone. Dick would be hugging Damian close, trying to make him feel safe and like things were going to be okay; Tim is digging his feet into the sand and starting to hyperventilate.

Damian throws him a look. “Control yourself, Drake,” he says, but fear creases his features.

Tim bites down harder on his knuckle and nods. Tries to keep his breathing steady instead of being pulled into the jagged, jumping rhythm of his spasming lungs.

He almost doesn’t hear the whir of the blades. He thinks he’s imagining it at first; then his eyes meet Damian’s. They look up.

“Father!” Damian shouts.

Bruce looks over. Follows their gazes. A sleek gray jet, too large to be the Javelin, is shimmering into visibility at the shoreline, a bare thirty feet away. As Tim squints against the sunlight bouncing off its metal surface, it descends slowly to the sand. A door neatly hidden in the starboard bulkhead unfolds. A woman comes down it. Her hair is massively curly, her stride aggressive in gleaming boots, and her face is—

“Helena?”

Tim’s hands tighten. Distantly he hears Damian suck in a breath behind him.

Dick is looking at the woman with the swirling, unrecognizable face like she’s Babs or Kori or Wonder Woman—someone he trusts to get them out of here. He’s pushing to his feet and starting toward her, too—Tim doesn’t reach out to grab Damian as he makes a sound half of alarm and half of anger and runs forward.

“Dick,” Bruce rumbles. He’s lifting Jason in his arms and—and looking at Dick like he’s waiting for his guidance.

Dick is still looking at the woman. She doesn’t move, and Tim can’t see her face, so he’s not sure what Dick sees that makes him nod at Bruce.

Bruce moves forward, up the bulkhead. Damian says, “Father!”

“It’s okay,” Dick says. He looks around for Tim, finds his eyes. “She’s a friend.”

“Helena Bertinelli is _not_ a friend,” Tim says, and hears the anger in his voice like it’s coming from another person.

“Maybe not,” Helena says. “But I am your only ticket off this rock, so maybe you want to get your ass on the plane.”

Tim catches Damian’s sleeve as they move forward. Dick’s looking at her with _affection_ , like a friend he’s about to hug, and Tim’s hand tightens in the salt-stiff material of Damian’s hoodie.

He feels Dick’s gaze move to him, the concern in it. “Tim—”

Tim ignores him. He drags Damian up the bulkhead with him, feeling Helena’s gaze on them, and Damian doesn’t protest.

Dick follows them, and Helena comes after him, pressing a control to close the gangplank once they’re all boarded.

“Huntress,” Bruce says from behind them. Tim turns and sees that he’s strapped Jason into the security harness of a cot built into the bulkhead. Jason’s face is clammy, his hand an oozing discolored mess where it lies tucked against his side. “Do you have first aid equipment?”

“Suturing material.” Helena’s voice is brusque. “Disinfectant. Nothing on the level of—” The swirl of her face spins slowly as she takes in the extent of Jason’s injuries, the open wound and the purple streaks traveling toward his elbow, “that.”

“Morphine, then.”

Dick crouches, opening a storage compartment hidden under the cot. There is a drawer with neatly labeled syringes of epinephrine and morphine, bags of saline, capsules that look like cyanide. He’s familiar with this plane, maybe did missions on it while they were mourning him, maybe played Candy Crush in this very cot while Tim stood in front of his grave and dug his fingernails into his scalp.

Helena’s head turns toward them like she scents the thought. She studies him for a moment, he can feel the regard even if he can’t see it, then asks evenly, “Either of you know how to fly?”

Dick pushes Damian gently forward by the shoulders. “Damian is the best pilot of all of us.”

It’s an attempt to relieve the immediate vicinity of at least one Robin terrified out of his wits by Jason’s state. Tim moves silently backward out of the way as Damian and Helena go into the cockpit; as Bruce swabs and slides an IV needles into the crook of Jason’s arm and Dick draws up the clear morphine in a syringe. He pushes his shoulder blades against the cold metal of the bulkhead and just watches, the way he did before Jason died.

The jet shudders and lifts into the air.

 

 

When Jason is well into his second bolus of fluids, Dick glances at Tim. The younger boy is ignoring him, his eyes fixed on Jason, and Dick looks at Bruce, aware of the reception that any comfort he attempts to give Tim will receive. But Bruce’s face is even more closed-off than Tim’s. He stares at Jason’s bloodless face like it’s his own personal hell.

Dick slips away to the cockpit. Warily, expecting to find that Damian and Helena have slit each other’s throats, or at least to be glaring each other down, but both of them are in full possession of all their limbs with no blood in sight. Damian appears visibly distracted, his gaze fixed on the controls but his thoughts clearly elsewhere, eyes unfocused. Dick puts an arm around his shoulders, tightening the hold gently when Damian starts. Their eyes meet, Damian searches his, Dick says, “He’s hanging in there,” quietly, and Damian looks away again, his shoulders tense under Dick’s.

Dick looks over at Helena. Her sunglasses remain in place on her face, hiding the direction of her gaze. Her features, as dark as Damian’s, betray no sign that she senses his eyes on her. ~~~~

“Helena,” he says. Can’t quite to think of what to say after that; the things all back up in his throat. A traffic jam, a clot. Things trapped.

He settles, finally, on, “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” she says shortly. She glances at the surveillance screen showing Jason on his cot and coaxes more speed from the snarling engines.

 

She must comm ahead, because Leslie is already waiting for them on the rooftop of Gotham General when the jet touches down on the helipad. Her white hair blows back from her face as she runs forward with the gurney being pushed by another man in a white coat.

They transfer Jason’s body onto the gurney quickly and efficiently, another IV site already accessed in his other antecubital and pumping fluid into him by the time they get him strapped in. Leslie is issuing orders, a nurse holds a bag-mask valve at the ready, and Bruce is striding, almost running, alongside them, his hand around Jason’s good one.

The elevator doors close behind them.

The other Robins stand on the rooftop that is suddenly very cold. The sun is setting behind them.

Dick grips Damian’s sleeve. Tim is very white-faced, his own fists white-knuckled at his sides.

Helena looks at them.

Damian moves in front of Dick almost protectively. “How did you know where we were?”

Helena regards him. Her mouth curves, just barely. Then, returning her gaze to Dick, she holds out a small disc. It looks like a watch battery.

“EMP,” she says. “When you’re ready, activate it. Your spleen will collect the remnants of the nanobots. Fair warning, Poppy thinks they might cause autosplenectomy.”

Dick takes it. His fingers close over it.

She strides back to the jet. The gangplank closes, and it rises, lifting away and then—disappearing.

Silence.

“They still had you tagged.” Tim’s voice is deadly calm, but the last syllable wavers. “Did you know?”

Dick meets his eyes. “Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters!” Tim’s voice cracks, it’s so shrill. “They could have taken you back any time they wanted!”

“Then,” Dick says, “I guess I’d just have to trust you guys to come get me.”

Another silence. Tim breathing harshly, his fists clenched.

Dick takes one of them. Enfolding his callused fingers gently around the balled ones. “C’mon,” he says quietly, and presses the elevator button with his free hand before offering it to Damian. Damian takes it.

The elevator doors open. Tim lets himself be led inside.

 

 

The trauma surgery suites are on the second floor. They are all unfortunately very familiar with the location.

Leslie intercepts them almost the minute they step off the elevator. “Boys!”

“Leslie.” Dick’s hand tightens around Damian’s. “How—?”

“He’s going to the OR,” Leslie says tersely. “That hand needs emergent debridement.”

“Where’s my father?”

“He went in with him.”

Dick’s eyes ask, _is he going to make it?_

“He’ll make it,” Leslie says grimly. “Whether his hand will—that’s the question.”

Tim lets out a sudden laugh. It’s strained and hysterical. “There goes his sex life,” he says, and laughs shakily again, and crouches on the floor, hands in his hair.

Leslie eyes him with a mixture of concern and disapproval. “How long has it been since you boys ate?” Her critical eye travels to the other two. “Let me see your stitches,” she orders Dick.

“Everyone wants a strip tease,” Dick says, which earns him a _very_ severe look from Leslie. “Okay,” he quails, and pulls off his shirt.

They all end up getting hooked up to IVs for fluid boluses, by the middle of which Alfred has arrived, looking pale, haggard, and impeccably dressed.

“Did you bring Titus?” Damian demands. He looks flushed and fever-eyed; Dick thinks he’s probably about two seconds from a meltdown.

“Unfortunately I did not think it was a wise idea to bring a dog to the hospital,” Alfred says. “I have, however, brought fresh clothing. And…”

He looks meaningfully behind him. A very mediocre-looking brown-haired man slips into the room.

“J’onn.”

“I am very sorry,” the Martian says somberly. “This was not what we intended to happen.”

Tim is very pale and very angry. Dick catches his wrist, enclosing the clenched fist inside it.

That’s the moment the door into the warren of OR rooms swings open. Bruce emerges in surgical scrubs and mask, a cap. His eyes are lined and strained and, when they land on J’onn above his mask, pale with fury.

“Get out.”

“I am sorry,” J’onn says.

“I don’t care.”

J’onn inclines his head. “If these is anything I can do,” he says quietly to Alfred, and slips from the room.

“What’s going on?” Tim demands.

Bruce shakes his head. “They asked me to leave,” he says, and sits down. Drags a hand down his bristled face.

Damian moves closer. He doesn’t sit but stands next to Bruce, their shoulders brushing. Alfred seats himself in the chair on Bruce’s other side and clasps his shoulder gently.

They wait.

 

 

One hour.

 

 

Two.

 

 

Two and a half.

 

 

Three.

 

 

At hour four, Dick pushes to his feet. “I gotta pee,” he says lowly, not getting a response from anyone but Alfred, who nods, and made his retreat. There’s a one-person bathroom just outside the waiting room; Dick veers past it and down the hallway until he finds one further away; locks himself in and drops to his feet in front of the toilet.

His mouth fills with hot spit. His guts clench and roil. Nothing comes out. He grips the white bowl and tries to retch. Nothing comes out.

He rocks back on his heels. Digs the heels of his palms into his eyes.

“You’re moping, Grayson.”

He jumps, toppling backward onto his butt on the tile. Fumbles the small metal disc from his pocket. “Helena?”

“Yes.”

“This—isn’t an EMP?”

“It is. Wasn’t hard to make it a transmitter, too.”

He’s quiet. The thud of his blood in his ears, the warming metal of the EMP in his palm.

“You’re brooding,” she says.

He says nothing for a long time. Then: “He got cut saving me.”

“And that justifies your brooding how?”

“If he dies—” Dick falters. Remembering how dead Bruce looked, looking at Jason in the plane.

“Then they’ll need you more than ever,” Helena says. Bluntly. “Now get your face out of the toilet and go hold your brothers.”

Dick doesn’t move.

“ _Now_ ,” she says. “Or I’ll tell them about Jim and Juan.”

 

 

It’s still another one and a half hours before a man in scrubs leans his head in the door and says, “Mr. Wayne.”

They all look up. The surgeon blinks tiredly at the whole brood of them, taking a half step backward. Bruce presses Dick’s shoulder lightly, and only Alfred accompanies him out into the hallway to speak in low tones with the surgeon. The rest of them watch in mute suspense.

Bruce digs his knuckles into his face. Breathes raggedly. Tim’s fingers dig into Dick’s kneecap.

A few more inaudible questions. The surgeon shaking his head. Making a motion with his right hand. Alfred says something. Then Bruce nods and shakes the surgeon’s hand.

He and Alfred come back into the room. The other families’ eyes watch them, the same way they had watched the other families who finally heard news on their loved ones.

Bruce crouches. Damian is already leaning into him, looking heavy-eyed and half-asleep.

“He’s going up to the ICU,” Bruce says. He steadies Damian with one hand, grips the edge of a chair with the other. “They have a wound VAC on his hand, they think they were able to salvage all the nerves, but they won’t know for sure for a while. He’s going to need several repeat debridements, probably.”

Dick exhales. Alfred presses him and Tim close.

They go upstairs.

 

Jason drifts in and out of consciousness. He has a vague awareness of seeing familiar silhouettes: Dick, and Alfie, and Bruce, blurring together with scarier things, merging with pain in his hand that makes him remember the Joker’s loafers stepping on it, grinding into it, pulverizing the tiny bones in his wrist. His breath speeds up in reaction, the panic, the fear, and a very distant part of his mind hears the clinically disappointed voices of people around him saying, “All right, no extubation today; titrate him back up,” while the closer part registers only Bruce’s voice and a hand on his head, warm and heavy above his brows, soothing. They take him for debridement again after he does pass his spontaneous breathing test and get taken off the vent, and he swims back to consciousness as the narcotics wear off from the second debridement, blinking blearily and making some sort of sound.

“Oh my God,” comes a voice from the corner. He turns his head, and Tim is scrambling out of a recliner in the corner, his hair a bird’s nest and eyes ringed with black. “Jay!”

He coughs. Tim grabs a plastic pitcher from a table next to the bed and pours ice chips into a Styrofoam cup. He tips one onto Jason’s tongue. Jason closes his mouther and slug of a tongue around it and sucks. Tim watches him anxiously.

Jason opens his mouth for another chip. Tim shovels two in this time. Jason swallows these ones down instead of waiting for them to melt and croaks, “Where are we?”

“Gotham.” He briefly explains their rescue from the island. “Everyone else was here, but Alfred said we make too much noise when we’re all here—Bruce and I stayed, he just went to look at your last MRI scans with the surgeon—”

Oh yeah. Jason looks down at his hand. It’s heavily wrapped, a tube leading from inside the tan ACE wrap to a canister at the end of the bed. He becomes aware of a low hum and a gentle suction, like a starfish is attached to his palm. He snorts, throwing his head back on the pillow.

“What?” Tim says.

“Nothing. SpongeBob humor.” He waves his hand halfheartedly. “Barnacle Boy.”

“Oh.” Tim looks amused now instead of anxious, which is a relieving change. Jason smiles at him kind of dopily. It’s too nice having someone here in the hospital room with him, worrying whether he’s okay or not. A distant part of his brain is turning over the fact that he’s probably in some kind of Dilaudid dream. Or dead.

A soft knock on the door makes him turn his head on the pillow. The knob turns, and the last fucking person Jason would ever have expected pokes his head in the doorway.

“Hi,” Clark Kent says.

“Uh.” Jason clears his throat. “B’s not here.”

Clark’s eyes flick past him, taking in the room and its other occupant. “I know,” he says, carefully shutting the door behind him. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Jason tenses. So much for the Dilaudid dream. This is the part where the paying for his sins part of being dead starts.

“Did…Tim tell you?”

“No,” Tim says coolly from the other side of Jason’s bed. “Tim didn’t. Why don’t you?”

Jason casts him a glance, then looks back at Clark, brows raised.

Clark takes a step further into the room. “We…The League was aware of what a hard time everyone was having with Dick being back.”

A picture is starting to coalesce in Jason’s brain. The red scrap of cloak they found on the island. He glances at Tim again, who raises his brow back as though to say, _exactly_.

“We thought you all could do with some time to be a family. On your own.” Clark shakes his head. “It’s no excuse for what we did—we shouldn’t have stranded you all out there without safe guards. Jason, I’m sorry you were hurt. More than that—” His eyes burn into him, “I’m sorry you were put into a situation where you thought something worse might happen.”

Jason’s fists are clenched tightly. He shrugs.

Tim reads his discomfort.

A knock on the door rescues him from having to come up with some sort of response. A nurse in navy blue scrubs leans in the doorway. “Did you ring your call bu—” Her eyes land on Clark. “Excuse me, sir, visiting hours are over.”

“I’m sorry,” Clark says, and casts a last glance at Jason. He nods, his faint smile a last apology. Jason nods back.

As Clark slips past her, the R.N. looks at them. “Do you need anything, kiddo?” She can’t be much older than Dick is, with dark black hair the tips of which are dyed indigo.

“We’re good,” Tim says. “Must’ve pressed it by accident. Sorry.”

Jason waits until she’s closed the door again. “Pressed it by accident, my ass.”

“If you’re gonna complain about me being chivalrous, I won’t do it again.”

Jason “tt”s at him. He can feel himself starting to drift again, as if with the stress of having Superman in the room removed, his strings can go slack again. There’s a giant red Elmo balloon bobbing around against his ceiling, and he blinks at it.

“Bruce tore into him,” Tim says.

Elmo bobs as the air conditioner cycles on.

Tim leans over, slinging his arms over the bed railing and propping his chin on it as he props his phone up for Jason to watch the video on it. Bruce, from a sideways awkward angle, clearly being surreptitiously filmed as he grips the side of a hospital bed—Jason’s hospital bed. There is a flash of red and blue outside the window—it looks dark, like nighttime, or very early morning.

“—re my children. Not yours. They get hurt. They bleed. They die. So help me, Clark, if he—”

His voice catches. Cuts off.

Tim ends the video.

“He know you have that?”

“I pretended I was sleeping,” Tim says. “So, probably.”

Jason doesn’t say anything. They both watch the clear antibiotic drip slowly into his IV, Tim’s chin on the rail and Jason’s on his chest.

“How’re the D’s?” Jason says finally.

“Damian hasn’t let Dick out of his sight. Titus hasn’t let Damian out of his.” Tim nods up at the Elmo balloon. “Steph and Cass brought you that.”

Jason snorts as he finally lets his eyes close. “Of course they did.”

 

 

Jason’s room on the orthopedic floor, once he’s released from the ICU, is a private one, with dark wood paneling. A tinted window looks out over the Gotham skyline, and it has its own sitting area with way better cushioned chairs than the ones in the waiting rooms. Dick sees Jason’s eyes flicking around it, taking it in, his gaze flicking between the window, the bags of IV fluids hanging from the pole beside him, and the five of them, as though gauging how long it will take them to fall asleep so that he can unhook himself from the IV and sneak out.

“Dogpile,” he orders. And Tim, with a long-suffering expression, climbs onto the bed, settling himself on Jason’s shins, while Steph and Cass comply with the order much more enthusiastically, vaulting onto Jason with no regard to what tender parts their elbows might land on, as Jason hollers, “Fuck, fuck, get offa me, get offa me” to no avail.

“Shut up and soak up the love, Little Wing,” Dick tell shim, wiggling himself under the others so he can get an arm around Jason’s shoulders and haul him in, careful of his PICC line.

Jason flips him the finger, glaring. “I can’t feel my balls.”

"Tt," says Damian, from where he has deigned to climb up into the big comfy armchair beside the bed. "Refrain from such vulgarity in the presence of ladies, Todd."

"Aw, Dami!" Steph exclaims. "That's so sweet."

"Tt," Damian says again. "I didn't mean _you_ , Brown. I was referring to Cassandra."

Cass looks at him reproachfully.

"I told you he had a crush on you," Steph whispers loudly.

Damian colors violently. "Cease your foolishness, Brown!"

Steph laughs madly and rolls off the bed, pulling another "fuck!" from Jason. Cass pats him consolingly in the affected area and slides off the bed after Stephanie. "Patrol," she explains to Dick's raised eyebrow, and touches his ear. "Bruce…coming."

Dick nods in comprehension. "Thanks, you two."

Steph leans in close enough for him to smack a kiss onto her cheek. "No problem, big bro."

He grins at her and points at Cass. She leans in, eyes serious, and he plants the same kiss on her nose, grinning at her as they both go cross-eyed from the proximity.

Cass pulls back. "Brought…movies." She points at the bag in the corner.

"Damian, fetch!"

Damian glares daggers at him.

Jason barks a laugh. "You just kissed his lady, Dickface."

Damian goes red again. "She is not my lady, Todd."

"True," Tim says. "If anything, I think she would definitely be the dominant one in the relationship."

Dick and Jason laugh so hard that Dick is clutching his stomach, feeling the stitches pull, which of course is when Bruce comes in with Leslie. They both zero in immediately on the hand Dick has over his stitches.

He removes them immediately. "Not my fault!"

Leslie casts a disapproving eye around at all of them, except for Tim, who is her particular favorite, and Cass and Steph, who have somehow disappeared out the window, only a smiley-face drawn on the mirror to indicate they were there. Bruce takes off the ski cap he had been wearing to avoid the reporters outside, running a hand through his hair, as Leslie comes to the bed and pushes Dick's shirt up to inspect his stitches, pressing none too gently at the edges of the wound. He hears Jason snickering beside him and says, "Leslie, I think Jason was feeling a little warm before…"

Leslie's sharp gaze swings to Jason.

"I was not!" he exclaims. "Dick's being an ass to distract you."

"Be that as it may," Leslie says severely, and pushes Jason back against the bed to listen to his lungs. "Deep breaths."

Jason glares at Dick as he inhales, exhales. Dick just grins back.

Bruce, meanwhile, has settled into the less comfortable chair next to Damian's, as Damian has not relinquished his own seat. He raises an eyebrow at Tim, who remembers where he's sitting. "Dick's orders," he explains.

"Hn," is all Bruce says.

Leslie pulls back from listening to Jason's lungs and straightens to inspect the vials draining into his IV. She turns his hand over, then, pressing the skin gently to look for capillary refill, then sets it gently back down. "Very good."

"You mean he can go back to his usual right-handed activities?" Tim says innocently, and Dick guffaws. Even Bruce's mouth turns up on one side. Jason flips all three of them the bird.

"I can't wait to get the lot of you out of here," Leslie informs them, but she, too, is smiling. She looks over at Bruce. A meaningful look seems to pass between them; and then she steps to the sink, washing her hands. "I expect you to be here when I return tomorrow morning," she says over her shoulder to Jason.

"Sure thing, Doc," he says sardonically, and Leslie pins him on one more severe look before stepping out and closing the door behind her.

"How are you feeling?" Bruce says into the silence left behind. The three oldest Robins all exchange glances with each other, betraying their surprise at the moment; Jason seems to struggle for a moment with whether to reply, and finally shrugs. "Had worse."

"How stoic," Tim says.

"Shut up, shrimp," Jason says, and kicks his leg to dislodge Tim. "Quit humpin' my leg down there."

Tim rolls his eyes and punches Jason in the knee. He howls.

A throat is cleared in the doorway. They look up to see Alfred there, eyeing them with lifted eyebrow.

Jason and Tim flush. Damian rolls his eyes.

“I am, of course, very pleased to see you all back to your usual selves,” Alfred says dryly. “Master Bruce, I’ve brought what you requested.”

“Marshmallows!” Dick exclaims, spotting the package in the supermarket bag. He takes it from Alfred, pawing through the contents. “These are s’mores ingredients!”

“Excellent,” Jason says. “We could do with a little campfire.”

“There will be no setting of fires in Dr. Thompkins’ hospital,” Alfred says severely. “There is a microwave for that purpose.” He opens one of the wooden panels opposite the bed. It reveals a microwave behind it.

“And.” Bruce pulls another of the panels out of the way. It reveals a television screen, and a small DVD slot beneath it.

Alfred reaches inside his coat, pulling out a small DVD case. “I took the liberty of bringing your favorite, Master Jason.”

“What’s his favorite?” Damian says curiously.

The familiar strains of the _Pride and Prejudice_ theme begin to play from the speakers. The menu screen ripples to life, showing Kiera Knightley standing in a wide field looking out into the distance.

Dick nearly tears his new stitches laughing.

 

 

He falls asleep sometime during the director’s commentary, eyelids drifting shut to the soothing background music and Bruce’s rumbling voice, Jason’s nearly-as-deep-one. Their voices fade as he sinks, and he dreams—

He jerks back awake hours later. Skin clammy with sweat and body tense with the thought that he’s back at St. Hadrian’s, unable to raise Bruce on the radio.

A loud snore breaks some of his panic. He stares, half uncomprehending, at the shape on the bed, silhouetted by the light from monitor machines lining the room. Jason, pushed onto his side in the bed to make room for Tim to squeeze into a ball, curled up next to him, and Damian curled up just as cat-like at the foot of the bed.

He stares at them. And, as his eyes adjust to the dark, he sees the eyes gleaming back at him from the other side of Jason’s bed.

“We’re here,” Bruce rumbles. “Go back to sleep, Dick.”

Dick does.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
